By Jim Dower: Undefeated #7 WBC junior middleweight contender Erickson Lubin (15-0, 11 KOs) destroyed an over-matched Daniel Sandoval (38-4, 35 KOs) in a third round knockout victory on Saturday night at the UIC Pavilion, in Chicago, Illinois, USA.
The 20-year-old Lubin hurt Sandoval with a big right hand in the third round. Lubin then flurried on the badly hurt Sandoval with power shots until referee Mark Nelson stepped in to halt the fight. The official time of the stoppage was at 2:36.
“I didn’t really know [Sandoval was hurt] because he’s a veteran, and he didn’t show much. I hit him with a right hand and I wanted to take him out. I want to show I’m the beat 154lb fighter out there, and win a world title,” said Lubin.
Lubin landed a lot of hard body shots in the fight. Sandoval initially started strong in the opening seconds of round one, but Lubin turned the fight around quickly with his powerful body punching.
Sandoval was trying his best to go on the attack early on. There is no question that Sandoval landed some nice shots from time to time in rounds one and two. However, Lubin was making Sandoval pay for everything he landed by countering him with hard body shots and punches to the head. The body work Lubin did in the first two rounds seemed to sap the energy out of Sandoval’s game, because he had almost completely stopped throwing punches by the third round. Sandoval was just taking shots by that period of the fight. When Sandoval did let his hands go, he didn’t have the power on his shots that he had initially.
Lubin’s commitment to body punching reminded me a lot of unbeaten welterweight contender Errol Spence with the way he goes after his opponent’s body in his fights. Lubin was like a taller version of Spence. He’s not as quite as aggressive as Spence though, but very close.
Lubin wants to go after the big names in the junior middleweight division. I’m not sure if Lubin is ready for guys like the Charlo brothers, Demetrius Andrade, Liam Smith and Erislandy Lara right now.
I think Lubin needs more time to improve before he starts thinking of fighting those types of fighters. Lubin doesn’t have the blazing hand speed that some of the 154lb fighters have. This means he’s going to need to depend more on his punching power, timing and defense for him to win his fights. Lubin is also going to need good footwork to be able to cut off the ring against movers like Lara. It won’t help Lubin having nice punching power if he can’t cut off the ring on fighters that circle the ring endlessly like Lara. At this point in Lubin’s career, he might be better off to target the WBO title held by Liam Smith if he wants a quick world title.
Going after the Charlo brothers or Lara might be a little too advanced for Lubin. Those guys are fighters that Lubin should be targeting in three or four years. Lara is 33, and the Charlo brothers are both 26. Lubin is only 20. It’s still too early for Lubin to be fighting those guys. Three to four years from now, Lara will be 36 or 37, and likely showing signs of age. The Charlo brothers will probably have moved up to middleweight by that point, because they’re both going to fill out more. Those fighters leaving the middleweight division will leave a vacancy for Lubin to fill.