By Jeff Aranow: 34-year-old former WBA/WBO light flyweight champion Giovanni Segura (33-4-1, 29 KOs) defeated journeyman Ernesto Guerrero (22-18, 15 KOs) by a 3rd round knockout last Saturday night in a fight that took place at featherweight at the Commerce Hotel & Casino in Commerce, California.
The southpaw Segura dropped Guerrero, 27, with a left to the body in the third. The fight was then halted by referee Tom Taylor.
This was Segura’s first fight since suffering an 11th round knockout against WBA/WBO World flyweight champion Juan Francisco Estrada almost two years ago in September 2014. That’s a long time for a fighter to be out of the ring. You can’t blame Segura for fighting a journeyman given that much time out of the ring. That would also explain why Segura looked kind of fleshy like he was carrying around some excess poundage. However, if Segura is going to fight at featherweight, then he’s going to need to be a little more solid than he was last night, because he just looked an out of shape light flyweight to me. He did not look like a featherweight.
Segura, sporting very short hair, looked heavy and not entirely in the greatest compared to when he used to fight at t light flyweight at 108lbs. Segura weighed in at 125lbs last Friday for his featherweight bout against Guerrero, and appears he’s going to try and campaign as a featherweight.
At 5’3”, I don’t think it’s going to work out for Segura fighting at featherweight. He’s too small, and he doesn’t match up well on paper against the other top featherweights like Gary Russell Jr., Leo Santa Cruz, Carl Frampton, Jesus Cuellar, Oscar Valdez and Lee Selby. Segura would be better off going on a diet an getting back down to light flyweight so that he can try and make something of the remainder of his career.
Segura isn’t young at 34, and I can’t see him beating any of the top featherweights or even the contenders for that matter, not that he’s going to be fighting any actual contenders. It’s likely that Segura will fight some scrubs, and likely get a high ranking, and then fight for a world title and probably get destroyed.
Segura dominated the light flyweight division five years ago in beating guys like Ivan Calderon twice. Things soured for Segura in December 2011, when he was stopped in the 8th round by Brian Viloria. Segura was then beaten by Edgar Sosa by a 12 round decision in May 2013. Segura followed that defeat with three straight wins over Jonathan Gonzalez, Hernan Marquz and Felipe Salguero before suffering an 11th round knockout loss to Estrada in 2014.
Like I was saying, I Segura is wasting his time in fighting in the featherweight division, because he does not figure to be able to compete with the best in this division.
Other boxing results on the card:
Jose “Gallo” Gomez TKO 1 Bryan Perez
Jose Ramirez UD 6 Giovanni Caro
Victor Betancourt TKO 4 Jose Luis Hernandez
Ruben Martinez UD 4 Jose Ruiz
Antonio Santa Cruz TKO 2 Carlos Ramirez
Ricardo Cuellar TKO 3 Daniel Gutierrez