Distraction-free Guerrero wins two lightweight belts
Robert Guerrero showed how good he can be in the ring when he can narrow his focus to boxing.
The lightweight from Gilroy, Calif., has spent the better part of four years helping his wife, Casey, battle leukemia. She is doing better, freeing up Guerrero to concentrate on his boxing career.
After a distraction-free training camp in Las Vegas, Guerrero put on a clinic at the MGM Grand Garden, beating up Michael Katsidis for 12 rounds Saturday to win a unanimous decision and the vacant WBA and WBO interim lightweight titles. The fight headlined the undercard of the Marcos Maidana-Erik Morales title bout.
Judge Dave Moretti had Guerrero winning 118-106, C.J. Ross scored it 118-107 and Patricia Morse-Jarman had it 117-108.
“I feel great,” said Guerrero (29-1-1). “I won two titles. How can I not feel great?
“I wanted to show I’m a warrior. Sometimes you have to beat (Katsidis) at his own game.”
Dominating throughout, Guerrero masterfully outboxed Katsidis, constantly beating him to the punch, establishing an effective jab and countering beautifully when the Australian missed.
“I wanted to get in there, get busy, use the jab and be the aggressor,” Guerrero said.
He almost had Katsidis down and out in the fifth round. Katsidis stayed upright but was clearly in trouble, and he appeared desperate in the eighth when he hit Guerrero low twice, resulting in a two-point deduction by referee Russell Mora.
Guerrero had a point deducted in the ninth for a low blow, but he was so far ahead it didn’t matter.
Katsidis (27-4) had no comment after the fight. But Guerrero said he was prepared to punish him.
“Coming to Vegas to train made all the difference,” he said. “It showed in my performance.”
Also on the undercard, middleweight James Kirkland’s comeback from his second prison sentence suffered a serious setback when Japan’s Nobuhiro Ishida scored a stunning first-round technical knockout.
Ishida (23-6-2) knocked down Kirkland in the first minute with a right to the jaw. Ishida followed with a left that sent Kirkland sprawling, and one more left finished him. Referee Joe Cortez stepped in, and Kirkland suffered his first defeat in 28 professional fights.
“(Kirkland) didn’t expect this from me,” Ishida said. “He didn’t respect what I had, and he kept coming straight at me, so I kept hitting him and he went down.”
Former super lightweight champion Paulie Malignaggi outboxed Jose Miguel Cotto for 10 rounds to win a unanimous decision. Despite a cut over his left eye in the fourth round and possibly breaking his left hand, Malignaggi dominated to improve to 29-4.