Robert Guerrero Feels Strongly That He Was Robbed

Danny Garcia outpointed Robert Guerrero on Saturday night to win the vacant WBC welterweight title. All three judges had identical scores of 116-112; they only disagreed on the fifth and tenth rounds.

Thurman, who provided television commentary on the fight, defends his WBA crown in March against former world champion Shawn Porter and longingly eyed Garcia’s title.

“I wanted to come in and put some pressure on him”, Guerrero said. He came to fight. If he thinks I’m tailor-made for him, come bring it. I got a whole bunch of tailor-made suits, I know how to fit into those. The Philadelphia fighter took charge with a dominant right hand, out-boxing and punishing Guerrero (33-4-1) before surviving a frantic 12th round.

Despite punch statistics showing Garcia landed 163 punches to Guerrero’s 108, Guerrero hung on to the early highlights in asking for a rematch, arguing that “not one person out there thought Danny won, but his team”. “I pressured him, I nailed him, busted his body up”. “I want to fight the best”, he barked. “How are you going to win a fight when you run and hold every time?” Guerrero came out with a head of steam and was brimming with confidence for the first half of the fight, but was unable to maintain his pace and took a hellacious amount of punishment as he began to tire. “That wasn’t fair. I want a rematch as soon as possible”.

Now with two dominating performances as a full-fledged Welterweight under his belt and a title to boot, there’s no doubting that Garcia is back on track and is a force to be reckoned with.

Dominic Breazeale and Amir Mansour opened the main card with an entertaining, but short fight in the heavyweight division.

In a 10-round welterweight battle, “Sergeant” Sammy Vasquez of Monessen, Pennsylvania improved to (21-0, 15 KOs) with a sixth round stoppage of Aron Martinez, (20-5, 4 KOs) of Michoacan, Mexico. Meanwhile, Guerrero, a southpaw, used a sharp straight left hand to back Garcia up. Both fighters had damage under the right eye.

Garcia exerted control from there, but Guerrero occasionally replied before they finished with an all-action 12th round.

Breazeale (17-0, 15 KOs), a former college football quarterback who boxed at the London Olympics, got rocked repeatedly by the 43-year-old Mansour (22-2-1) in the first three rounds.

He recovered well and landed several big fifth-round punches on Mansour, who quit on his stool, believing he had broken his jaw.

It was later confirmed that Mansour had a fractured jaw.

An intense exchange of blows in the final round had the crowd standing and cheering with the fighters firing rapid flurries of punches before hugging in the centre of the ring after the final bell. Anytime it is a world title fight, no one is going to slouch. Perhaps sensing the fight was close, they both came out strong in the 12th round as though each was looking for a knockout in what turned out to be a frenzied final round. But Khan, one of the biggest names at welterweight, is his mandatory challenger and could be next.

Yet Mansour swarmed Breazeale from the beginning and showed him the boxing version of intentional grounding. It happens to the best of us.