Guinn Beaten Again!

Heavyweight prospect Dominick Guinn suffered another disastrous loss tonight in Bally’s Hotel and Casino in Atlantic City, USA when he lost a decision to fellow contender Serguei Lyakhovich. Trainer Ronnie Shields is not having the best of times these days as he has experienced high profile losses with Evander Holyfield and now Guinn in successive months. Lyakhovich, known as the “white wolf,” took the decision with scores of 94-96 on two cards and an even wider 93-97. Guinn’s future prospects look bleak at this point considering that he was the fighter who was once thought to be a serious contender to become a heavyweight champion. Lyakhovich’s only loss came came against Maurica Harris two years ago and he moves on to secure other important fights.

Also tonight at Bally’s, undefeated featherweight contender Rocky Juarez moved his record to a perfect twenty-two wins with a solid second round knockout of former WBC featherweight champion Guty Espadas Jr. Juarez stays on course to contest the IBF title against Juan Manuel Marquez.

Read on for individual reviews of these fights.

Juarez-Espadas.

It was only a two round workout for Juarez tonight in Texas as he provided the main event action in a special promotion laid on by his handlers Main Events. As an Olympic silver medalist, Juarez has a good degree of experience under his belt and this was an interesting match-up to behold that pitted his amateur mettle and relative novice experience to the much greater professional ground earned by his opponent Guty Espadas Jr. Espadas once held the WBC featherweight title and was thought by many to have done enough to have beaten the surely immortalized Mexican warrior Erik Morales. But it was not to be and Espadas’s record shows two defeats at Morales’s hands. Juarez looked to take some of the attention away from the controversy that surrounded his win over Zahir Raheem earlier this year, a fight that was clouded in dissention over referee Robert Gonzalez’s debatable officiousness.

Juarez came out strong and using his jab, looking to land his vaunted left hook on the veteran Espadas who for the most part negated his height advantage and seemed content to trade blows at closer quarters. Juarez looked incrediby solid physically and consistently shot his jab out at Espadas, not looking to waste a thing in a very businesslike opening round in which he likely won on all scorecards.

Juarez’s confidence flowed into the second round when he began to exchange more close, inside blows with Espadas and then suddenly the end of the fight was brought to us courtesy of a beautiful Juarez left hook. Juarez dug a right to the body followed by a hurtful uppercut that forced Espadas’ chin up into the air; hurt and searching through thin air for Juarez, Espadas groped forward with a right hand of his own. But Juarez showed that he had measured his attack perfectly, he had leaned back out of harms way and launched himself back into a murderous counter left hook that took effect on Espadas body immediately.

In a split second, Juarez was ushered away to a neutral corner as Espadas lay flat on his back while being counted out by referee Eddie Cotton. Espadas rolled over to his front and his nose poured with blood onto the canvas as his team eushed to his assistance. Espadas was later checked into a local hospital and examinations revealed that he had suffered a broken nose from that single shot.
Juarez looked absolutely dynamite in the ring, he showed intelligence, economy, patience and power. A lot of people are going to be converted to the cause of Rocky Juarez after seeing this fight and he will be a handful if not too much entirely for any featherweight in the world.

Lyakhovich-Guinn.

Heavyweight contenders Sergei Lyakhovich and Dominick Guinn were two fighters on entirely different ends of the attention spectrum coming into this fight and they will surely be again, except that they have exchanged places as not many people will be convinced of Guinn’s talents anymore after seeing this lacklustre display. The fight ran the entire ten round course with the action maintaining much of the same dull rhythm for the duration with only short bursts of combinations exchanged between the two men.

Guinn talks a great fight outside of the ring but it has to be said at least on this occasion that something seemed to be drastically lacking in his approach or his mental makeup as he constantly frustrated his training team with passionless efforts round after round. Lyakhovich did not do anything special other than attempt to get his punches going much more frequently than Guinn and it proved to be the deciding factor down the stretch as there were no knockdowns or point deductions administered to separate the two.

Guinn’s face said it all as the decision was read back but in truth, it was only a slightly more amplified version of the indifference he had shown throughout the entire fight. Guinn’s apparent undermotivation was shocking to behold as many were more than willing to forgive his loss to Monte Barrett in the hope that he could regain his form and become one of the top heavyweights in the world, perhaps even a champion. However, Guinn will have to ask himself some serious questions as he looked completely disinterested to engage his opponent in a fight that meant a great deal to his boxing future.

Lyakhovich doesn’t do many things very well but he at least showed the willingness to fight and deserved the victory; you only had to watch his gleeful reaction to the decision to understand that it meant a lot to him. A prototypical super heavyweight in stature, there are many things that Lyakhovich needs to improve upon in his game, principally the way he throws lead rights with entirely no regard for a counter coming his way, something far more experienced and motivated fighters will exploit at his expense. Lyakhovich should take his conditioning and his career very seriously, not get carried away at beating a “name” such as Guinn and prepare himself properly for much toughter tests on the road ahead.