By Scott Gilfoid: Matchroom Sport promoter Eddie Hearn expects his fighter WBA World lightweight champion Anthony Crolla (30-4-3, 12 KOs) to successfully defend his title against #1 WBA contender Ismael Barroso (19-0-2, 18 KOs) in their fight coming up.
The World Boxing Association spoiled Hearn’s plans of putting Crolla in a unification fight by ordering last week that Crolla must defend his WBA title against the 32-year-old KO artist Barroso by April 12. If Crolla fails to do so, he’ll be unceremoniously stripped of his WBA title.
This is going to be a whole different kettle of fish for the 29-year-old Crolla compared to his last fights against Darleys Perez, who fought at a painfully slow pace and let Crolla lead much of the time.
Barroso is like hyper version of Derry Mathews but with better punching power, a higher work rate and a much better left hand. In other words, Barroso is going to be a real nightmare for Crolla and I can’t imagine what he’s going to do to try and win this fight.
My guess is we’ll be seeing the old tactic used by fighters that are overmatched with Crolla running and holding all night long. I wouldn’t be surprised if Crolla clinches 12 to 15 times per rounds in order to try and shutdown Barroso’s offense.
If the referee isn’t on his J-O-B that night, we could see a real stinker with some gawd awful clinching from Crolla. I just hope the referee does the right thing and takes points off if things get really out of hand.
“Barroso is the target for the first defence. It’s a very dangerous fight but they all are at world championship level,” Hearn said to skysports.com. “Barroso is dangerous and can punch with both hands but I think Crolla is massively underrated. I fancy him in that fight.”
Hearn can fancy Crolla all he wants, but I don’t see that changing anything that’s going to happen inside the ring. I see it as a handing over of the belts. Crolla will likely get the stuffing beaten out of him by Barroso, and afterwards it’ll be Barroso going home with his WBA lightweight title. I just the fight doesn’t turn into a terrible clinch-fest like we saw with the Kell Brook vs. Shawn Porter fight a couple of years ago with Brook grabbing Porter in a tight embrace each time he got near enough to throw a punch.
Barroso is coming off an impressive 5th round knockout win over Kevin Mitchell last December at the O2 Arena in London, UK. Barroso dropped Mitchell three times in the fight before the one-sided fight was finally halted in the 5th. It’s a good thing it was stopped because Barroso was going to do a real job on Mitchell had it been allowed to continue.
Crolla stopped Darleys Perez in the 5th round last November with a left hand body shot to win the WBA lightweight title at the Manchester Arena in Manchester, UK. However, there’s a big difference between the talent of Perez and the talent of Barroso. I would dare to say that Barroso is world’s better than Perez. There’s no comparison at all between the two fighters.
“I don’t think it was the best Kevin Mitchell on the night. Barroso is dangerous and can punch with both hands but I think Crolla is massively underrated. I fancy him in that fight,” Hearn said. “A lot of people assumed Crolla would try and swerve that fight and that it’s a dangerous one, but when I spoke to Anthony last week, that motivated him. He likes to prove people wrong.”
What Hearn isn’t saying is that the WBA ordered Crolla to face Barroso by 4/12. Heck, Crolla had no choice in the matter. I mean, he couldn’t swerve the Barroso fight other than vacating the strap, so it’s not as if Crolla is being heroic for taking a fight that was ordered by the WBA. There was no other options for Crolla. When the WBA orders you to fight someone by April 12, that pretty much is the end of story.
Yeah, Crolla could have said ‘no way I’m fighting Barroso, I am going to do what I want to do.’ Nevertheless if Crolla took that attitude, the WBA would have come in from behind him and stripped him of his WBA strap and either gave it to Barroso straightaway or had him fight for the title against the next highest ranked available contender, which in this case is #2 WBA Felix Verdejo. I don’t know about you, but I would much prefer to see Barroso fighting Verdejo than seeing Barroso battling the light hitting Crolla. Verdejo is a tremendous puncher and it would be a great fight between him and the KO artist Barroso.
Comments are closed.