Gamboa vs. Ponce de Leon on 9/10

By Boxing News - 07/08/2011 - Comments

By Dan Ambrose: Former World Boxing Organization (WBO) super bantamweight champion Daniel Ponce de Leon (41-3, 34 KO’s) will be facing former IBF/WBA featherweight champion Yuriorkis Gamboa (20-0, 16 KO’s) on September 10th in an HBO non-title bout in Atlantic City, New Jersey.

Gamboa, 29, defeated Jorge Solis in a blowout 4th round knockout win last March. In his fight before that, Gamboa defeated Orlando Salido by a 12 round decision in Gamboa’s toughest fight of his four-year pro career. Salido was someone that Gamboa had to box in order to beat him because he found out early on that trying to destroy Salido wasn’t going to work. Gamboa was knocked down in the 8th by the hard hitting Salido.

Gamboa’s promoter Bob Arum had been talking about wanting to put Gamboa with Juan Manuel Lopez but those plans were ruined when Lopez was recently beaten by Salido. Arum still wants to match Gamboa and Lopez, but it will require that Lopez beat Salido in a rematch later this year.

De Leon was beaten by super featherweight contender Adrien Broner by a controversial 10 round decision last March. Although De Leon lost the fight, he was the aggressor and fought well enough to win in the minds of many boxing fans. He took the fight to the speedy Broner and made him work hard to win a close decision.

Gamboa will likely ave too much speed for De Leon to handle. We saw in De Leon’s 1st round knockout loss to Lopez in June 2008 that De Leon has problems with guys that have good hand speed. Broner also gave De Leon problems but wasn’t strong enough to take him out and was forced to win a punishing fight.



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