Yuriorkis Gamboa vs. Robinson Castellanos – Results

Boxingnews24.com

By Jim Dower: In a shocking defeat, former IBF/WBA featherweight champion Yuriorkis Gamboa (26-2, 17 KOs) quit on his stool after the 7th round in his fight against 35-year-old journeyman Robinson Castellanos (24-12, 14 KOs) in a scheduled 10 round fight at The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas, in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Gamboa, 35, was knocked down in rounds 3 and 4, and staggered twice in the 7th. After the round ended, Gamboa decided he’d had enough and quit on his stool. It was a good move for Gamboa to quit, because he looked exhausted, slow and old in taking a beating from a guy the same age him. Castellano looked a lot younger and was still fresh in the 7th round. I wouldn’t say that Castellanos was impressive. He was far from it. He was just powerful, big and always looking a hard knockout shot.

(Photo Credit: Hogan Photos/Golden Boy Promotions)

Castellanos dropped Gamboa with a big right hand to the jaw in round 3. Gamboa was attempting to throw a left hook from the outside when he was nailed by a chopping right hand from Castellanos. It was dumb mistake by Gamboa to be trying to throw a lead left hook without setting it up with something. It’s a risky punch to throw, because your opponent can nail you with a right hand while you’re in the process of throwing a right. That’s exactly what Castellanos did. Gamboa was lucky that the knockdown game at the end of the round because he would have had a hard time making it out of the 3rd round, because he was staggering around and his legs were totally gone.

At the start of round 4, Castellanos knocked Gamboa down with a looping right hand to the head that put him down face first on the canvas. A badly hurt Gamboa got back to his feet and was staggered by several more big left hands from Castellanos. At one point in the round, Gamboa pulled Castellanos to the canvas to try and buy some time.

Castellanos continued to throw big looping power shots for the remainder of the round, Gamboa did a good job of leaning away from most of them to avoid getting hit. By the end of the round, Castellanos was tired and no longer had anything left in the tank. He had gassed out and was unable to finish Gamboa off. A good fighter would have destroyed Gamboa, but Castellanos is just a hard hitting journeyman with limited boxing skills. But as we saw tonight, Gamboa is no longer good enough to beat a powerful journeyman with a meager skillset. One of the reasons for that is because of Gamboa’s age, inactivity over the last 5 years of his career, and his own poor boxing skills.

Gamboa was able to come back and get the better of Castellanos in rounds 5 and 6 with his higher work rate, and short punches. Castellanos looked really tired, and the only thing he could really muster up was wild swings, that made him look drunk and very sloppy. Gamboa, as tired and hurt as he was, he was still able to easily avoid Castellanos’ big power shots. However, Gamboa needed to try and get Castellanos out of there, because he was going to get his second eventually and once he did, it would be a problem for Gambosa. The Cuban fighter tried as best as he could to hurt Castellanos, but he didn’t have the legs, speed or enough pop in his shots to give the Mexican fighter any problems with his big power shots.

In round 7, Castellanos hurt Gamboa at the start of the round with a big left hook to the head that got the crowd’s attention. Gamboa landed several defensive shots to try and keep Castellanos off of him, but it didn’t work. Castellanos was able to stagger Gamboa two more times in the round with hard shots to the head. In the last seconds of the round, Castellanos hurt Gamboa with a big left hook that had him looking out of it. Gamboa showed a lot of heart to make it to the end of the round but it was clear that he would have likely have been knocked out if he had continued into the 8th. Immediately after the 7th round ended, Gamboa quit on his stool after telling his trainer that he didn’t want to continue fighting.

The Gamboa-Castellanos fight look place in the lightweight division, which is 2 divisions above the weight that Gamboa started his career out in 2007. Gamboa looked thick around the middle, and not as speedy and powerful as he had earlier in his career. The weight didn’t look good for him. Gamboa weighed in at 133 pounds on Thursday’s weigh-in. It’s unclear how much he weighed tonight. It looked like it was at least in the low 140s, which is probably too much weight for Gamboa.

Just where Gamboa goes from here is the big question. He’s 35 now, and he doesn’t have enough speed and talent left in the tank to compete with the top lightweights in the division. Even if Gamboa were to move down in weight to super featherweight, he wouldn’t stand a chance against guys like Vasyl Lomachenko. There’s a wide gulf in talent between Lomachenko and Gamboa at this point.

Gamboa is still a talented fighter with decent boxing skills, but his main asset, his hand speed, is starting to decline at this point in his career. I don’t know if Gamboa can get back to where he was by training harder. He can definitely try and lose some weight to go back down to featherweight where his power would be more pronounced, but I don’t see hi trying. I think Camboa will stay at lightweight and continue to struggle. He only has 2 defeats on his 10-year resume in boxing, but I think he’ll get a lot more if he continues to fight on.

Gamboa made a mistake of fighting Castellanos, because he’s not that bad of a fighter despite having 12 losses on his resume. What most boxing fans don’t know is that most of Castellanos’s defeats came early in his career in the first 5 years of his career before he knew how to fight properly, It wasn’t until after 2010 that Castellanos started to develop as a fighter, which is too bad because if he knew back then what he knows now, he would have a much better record.

Castellanos recently beat Rocky Juarez, Ronny Rios and former two division world champion Celestino Caballero. Those are pretty good fighters, Granted, Juarez and Caballero weren’t the same guys that they were earlier in their careers when Castellanos beat them, but they were still quality guys.