Keep coming back here for running updates on the pay-per-view undercard for Floyd Mayweather vs. Miguel Cotto. It’s a mostly crappy affair, but I somewhat like the Deandre Latimore-Carlos Quintana junior middleweight scrap, and some have high hopes for another junior middleweight bout between Saul Alvarez and Shane Mosley.
In a nice opening bout, Carlos Quintana dished out five damaging left hands to Deandre Latimore in the 6th round to put him down for the count, and it’s the best win for Quintana since 2008’s upset of Paul Williams. Quintana tends to get stopped by people who can punch (Williams in the rematch, Miguel Cotto, Andre Berto) but he withstood Latimore’s own significant power in the first few rounds. Then, he used his boxing skills — better, despite some wear and tear over the years, than anything Latimore’s ever shown — to jab Latimore’s brain into a state of confusion. Latimore was live even as Quintana took over because of his power, but Quintana stayed on the offensive without getting too reckless and wobbled Latimore around for the last couple stanzas. Latimore is one of the guys promoted by Mayweather Promotions’ non-licensed promotional firm, and he’s looked in his last few like a bad investment, someone who hasn’t done much since his suprising 2008 upset of Sechew Powell. Quintana probably got himself another paycheck as an opponent with enough of a name and some juice coming off this upset win, but no serious threat to the bigger guys. Hard not to like what he did tonight, though, in an admirable performance.
Welterweight Jessie Vargas took a clean unanimous decision off Steve Forbes, and there were a couple different dynamics at play. Vargas was more controlled for much of the fight than ever before, indicating that he could be a real boxer-type rather than a brawler-type, dictating a fight with his jab from distance. Yet he was also more boring than ever before because of it. The other dynamic was that for as good as Vargas was early, Forbes caught up to Vargas late, and while Forbes has always been a pretty sharp boxer, that an old fellow like Forbes who was a late sub and is small for the weight was able to do that speaks to some of Vargas’ limitations. Maybe Vargas could’ve and should’ve turned up the gas to try to stop Forbes, but Forbes has always been sturdy and it’s hard to fault him for that part, at least. But to become a full-blown contender, Vargas has a ways to go.
When Shane Mosley is in a nursing home, his fight with Saul Alvarez will be one of the reasons. That doesn’t mean that Mosley didn’t make clear once more that Alvarez, as solid as he has become, isn’t himself limited on defense, isn’t as fast as you’d like (in comparison to a 40-year-old man) and is overall a bit vulnerable. Mosley was the kind of scary-sturdy that is in the short-term impresses with the warrior spirit, but in the long-term is a direct line to Mosley’s feeding tube. Alvarez’ combinations are impressive, and he is pretty accurate. He landed flush punch after flush punch. The one thing about Alvarez’ performance that you can’t knock is Mosley staying upright; Mosley does that. But this was a mismatch on paper where Mosley was more competitive than I expected, despite me scoring it a shutout for “Canelo.”
