When Erik Morales, Marco Antonio Barrera, and Manny Pacquiao migrated to the 130-pound division the once hot junior featherweight and featherweight weight classes lost a lot of luster.
Juan Manuel Marquez is still a name at featherweight, but the IBF and WBA champ needs an aggressive dance partner in order to be in an exciting fight. (Marquez?s May 7 title defense vs. Victor Polo might make his snooze-fest with Orlando Salido seem interesting.) Oscar Larios is still considered the best at 122 pounds, but the rangy WBC titlist has begun to stagnate fighting unknown mandatories and tough veterans like Wayne McCullough.
Both classy Mexican champs need to face an exciting young lion with star potential to in order to rekindle the heat in their divisions and Joan Guzman, the explosive undefeated WBO 122-pound titlist from the Dominican Republic, might fit the bill.
Guzman, who sports a 22-0 (17) record and turned heads with his total demolition of Agapito Sanchez last February, is a talented natural fighter with as much ring savvy and defensive skill as punching power.
The 28-year-old Dominican, who has been training in Coachella, California for the past two months, will defend his title against unbeaten-but-untested Fernando Beltran Jr. next Friday in Hidalgo, Texas, but he says he looks forward to invading the featherweight division and taking on its bigger names by the end of this year.
Guzman was supposed to take his first step towards stardom with a proposed unification bout with Larios that was supposed to be the co-feature to the April 9 Marco Antonio Barrera-Mzonke Fana pay-per-view fight, but the top dog at 122 pounds had to pull out due to an arm injury sustained during his 12-round battle with McCullough.
Larios-Guzman was thought to be one of the better matchups that can be made in the lower weight classes, but one veteran observer thinks that fight would have been a walk in the park for the WBO title holder.
Trainer/manager Lee Espinosa, who runs the Coachella boxing gym where Guzman has been training, says the Dominican is too big, too strong, too skilled and too talented for any 122 pounder to handle.
?He?s another [Jose Luis] Castillo,? said Espinsoa, whose fighter Julio Diaz had just been stopped by the big and skilled lightweight champ when MaxBoxing paid a visit to the gym to check out Guzman. ?He walks around at 140 pounds, then he goes down to 122 pounds for the weighin and becomes a monster the day of the fight. You can hit him, but you can?t hurt him.
?This guy will destroy Larios and Israel Vazquez and anybody else at 122 pounds. He?s too strong and he?s got good head movement, too.?
Guzman?s underrated defensive skills are what impressed this boxing writer when he observed the fighter train and spar three rounds with former WBO bantamweight titlist Mauricio Martinez five weeks ago.
Guzman made a splash among boxing insiders and diehard fans last year when he demolished Sanchez in seven brutal rounds. Nobody had ever man-handled Sanchez, who has wins over Larios and Javier Jauregui, in such one-sided fashion ? including Marquez and Marco Antonio Barrera. However, Sanchez, who is getting long in the tooth, had been inactive for two years going into the fight, causing this fight scribe to hold back on the praise Guzman probably deserved.
Guzman looked impressive, but how much of his victory was due to the fact that he was simply the bigger, younger, fresher and more-active fighter?
?A lot,? Guzman admitted. ?I could have boxed more, but he talked a lot of trash before the bout, so I was focused on just beating him up, not out-boxing him. He had differences with my former manager and I think he took it out on me, which made me mad.
?To be honest, I don?t like to have animosity toward other fighters. I don?t consider that fight to be one of my better performances.?
Despite the nickname ?Little Tyson?, a moniker based on the slight facial similarity to the former heavyweight champ as well as his considerable punching power, Guzman says that he?s at his best when he?s boxing and counter punching.
?My old team was too focused on my punching,? he said. ?They had me chasing after fighters, rushing in and trying to knockout everybody I fought. But that was not me. I?m a boxer. I can do so much more than punch.?
Guzman, a ?96 Olympian (who was eliminated by the eventual gold medalist in his weight class, Omar Narvaez), is proud of his amateur background, which he says includes more than 300 bouts, only 11 losses, an undefeated record against Cuban standouts, as well as Central American and Pan-Am gold medals.
That extensive amateur experienced showed when Guzman displayed his impressive defensive talent, footwork and counter-punching ability in a friendly sparring session with stablemate Martinez, a skilled veteran who is currently on an eight-fight win streak.
Guzman feinted and jabbed with fluidity. He easily avoided in-coming punches with smooth head and upper-body movement. He was also light on his feet. Guzman knows how to control the distance and he can keep his opponents at bay with only his footwork. When he let his hands go from the outside he landed crisp and accurate combinations. On the inside, Guzman was able slip punches by ducking and dipping with his knees bent and gloves to his sides (a la Pernell Whitaker). He?s an educated in-fighter who knows how to block punches, counter and spin his opponent out of position without getting touched.
He likes to show boat in the ring and taunt a little bit in order to get into his opponent?s mind. Even a novice observer can tell that he loves to fight. At the end of the third round with Martinez, 27-5-1 (18), Guzman finished with a blazing flurry as if to remind the Panamanian southpaw that he can brawl just as well as he can box.
Out of the ring, he?s bright, engaging and funny. If Guzman learns to speak English fluently (he already speaks a little bit) he has the potential to become a very popular fighter.
However, he does have a weakness ??the scales. He?s had difficulty making the junior featherweight limit in the past. Controversy surrounded Guzman?s last fight, which was supposed to be against fringe contender Marcos Licona but wound up being against journeyman Joe Morales, because of confusion over the contracted weight limit. Guzman claims that he was told that it was a non-title fight in which he could come in as heavy as 130 pounds. Licona claimed it was supposed to be a title fight and pulled out once he learned Guzman would come in at the junior lightweight limit.
Guzman?s no-nonsense trainer Francisco ?Yiyo? Guzman (no relation) says that weight is only a problem when his fighter does not have the proper amount of time to prepare for a fight.
?We always have problems with weight,? he admitted, ?but for this fight we?ve finally had enough time to train, so you?ll see him come in at 121, easy.?
The fighter says the issue with weight is a moot point since he plans up going to 126 pounds as soon as possible.
?I?ve had some problems with making 122 pounds because I?m a little tall for this weight class,? said Guzman, who is listed at 5-foot-7. ?But eventually, we all know that I?ll be a featherweight, so it?s not much of a concern for me.?
The trainer said he wants his fighter to fight once more at 122 pounds following next Friday?s bout in Texas, a summer title defense in New York City, before he plans to ask the WBO for permission to go to featherweight without losing his belt.
If he wins his first fight at featherweight, both Guzmans say there will be no looking back.
?Any of the 126-pound champions will do,? said Yiyo. ?Joan wants to be known. Last year started out good, but managerial problems ruined his momentum. He?s got to make up for lost time. All he needs is the opportunity.?
SO. CALI. GYM REPORT
While Guzman trained in the dry heat of Coachella, more than 100 miles southeast of Los Angeles, other world-class fighters have been preparing for upcoming bouts a little closer to this reporter?s home.
Undefeated welterweight prospect Paul ?the Punisher? Williams, 25-0 (19), got some good work from former amateur standout Larry Mosley (12-1 as a pro) at the L.A. Boxing Club on Tuesday and Wednesday. Williams, a southpaw who is every inch of his 6-foot-1, faces Terrance Cauthen next Friday in a ShoBox-televised main event.
Also spotted at the downtown L.A. gym was former IBF 130-pound champ Carlos Hernandez who was working with new trainer Rudy Hernandez. ?Famoso?, who fights Jesus Chavez at Staples Center on May 28 (SET PPV), looked sharp on the mitts. Hernandez?s ?boys? Jose Armando Santa Cruz, an 18-0 lightweight prospect who fights in the headliner of next Friday?s Telefutura show, and his brother Robert, who got on the map with his tough stand against Mike Arnaoutis in February, were next on the mitts.
(Word is, Santa Cruz has been giving Diego Corrales many quality rounds of sparring at Joe Goossen?s gym in Van Nuys, along with Silverio Ortiz and Carlos Cisneros. Rumor has it that Chico, who fights lightweight champ Jose Luis Castillo on May 7, has been sparring as much as 16 rounds at a time in preparation for the Mexican hardass.)
Jackie Kallen was also at the L.A. Boxing Club doing a photo shoot with her latest prot?g?, a 160-pound female fighter named Demi Ngyuen, who turns pro June 18 on a Simi Valley club card.
Tuesday in Maywood, Daniel Ponce-DeLeon looked sharp as he prepared for his April 29th Telefutura headliner against Ricardo Barajas. Deleon knocked out one of his sparring partners just as this writer walked through the door to the Maywood Boxing Club for a workout of his own. Also sighted at the evening gym was 17-1 welterweight prospect Freddy Hernandez, in from Mexico for Antonio Margarito?s final week of sparring, WBA 115-pound titlist Martin Castillo, bantamweight prospect Roger ?Speedy? Gonzalez, and junior lightweight prospect Urbano Antillon (another one of Rudy Hernandez?s ?boys? who fights on a May 6 Telefutra card).
Yesterday at the Azteca Boxing Club in Bell, undefeated flyweight prospect Giovanni Segura prepared for the same May 6 Telefutura card Antillon will be on by going four heated rounds with Anthony Villareal, a former amateur standout from Mexico now living in Riverside. Segura, who is 7-0-1 with 5 KOs (all in the first round), has a hard time finding and keeping sparring partners. Only Martin Castillo, one of the best fighters in the world in this writer?s opinion, consistently gives the 21-year-old flyweight quality rounds.
[Editor?s note: thanks to veteran cornerman Tony Rivera for translating Joan Guzman and his trainer to this Spanish-challenged fight scribe. Thanks also to veteran trainer Clemente Medina and Ray Alcorta for working the mitts with this woefully out-of-shape fool. Alcorta?s mitt work is almost as good as his matchmaking, which is a hell of compliment if you?ve ever been to one of his shows.]
