Punching his ticket to a title
Robert Guerrero looks to use latest fight as a step back to a championship.
Imagine there’s five minutes left on your treadmill run and Aerosmith’s “Dream On” begins to play through the earbuds.
That’s where 33-year-old, former two-division boxing champion Robert Guerrero finds himself.
“I’m at the tail end of my career,” Guerrero said. “You want to make that last run hard and good. You want to leave the sport knowing the fans look at you and appreciate the shows you’ve put on for them, knowing that you went and fought everybody and made the fights they wanted to see.”
Guerrero (33-4-1, 18 knockouts) has done that, taking on unbeaten welterweight champions Floyd Mayweather Jr., Keith Thurman and Danny Garcia in three of his last five fights.
He lost each of those bouts, but Guerrero’s effort was undeniable and he was knocked down just once in those 36 rounds, in the 116-112 unanimous-decision loss to World Boxing Council champion Garcia in January at Staples Center.
“Honestly, the way
Robert was coming on, I feel if the Thurman or Garcia fights were 15-rounders, it might’ve been a different story,” said Tom Brown, whose TGB Promotions handles promoting western Premier Boxing Champions bouts.
On Saturday, Guerrero returns to the ring to headline a PBC card at Honda Center against Argentine welterweight David Peralta (25-2-1, 14 KOs).
The 6-foot-1 Peralta presents a complex boxing style that helped him knock down Marcos Maidana as an amateur. He’s a test to ensure Guerrero won’t step off the gas in a nontitle fight, as he did in getting knocked down by Aron Martinez last year at StubHub Center.
And the bout is an opportunity for Guerrero to remain ready for the next big fight in boxing’s deepest division.
“The key is … getting back on my game, working my skills, using my legs, hand speed, lateral movement,” Guerrero said. “These are the type of fights you’ve got to take to stay sharp.”
For his U.S. debut, Peralta, who turns 34 next week, said he trained hard and was hoping for an upset win over Guerrero.
“Each fighter has a gift with his body, and I believe I have an advantage being taller [than Guerrero],” Peralta said through an interpreter.
“I believe I’m the thirdbest Argentinian behind Maidana and [juniorwelterweight] Lucas Matthysse, but I’ve never had a promoter who’s given me a chance.
“A fighter coming to fight [an opponent like Guerrero] means the opportunity is there for me.”
Guerrero, meanwhile, wants to stage a good show so he can be slotted back into a title bout or a title eliminator by PBC founder and his manager Al Haymon.
“He’s the mastermind of boxing, so it’s get this fight out of the way, stay sharp and get back to where I want to be,” Guerrero said. “There’s so many big fights out there. I want to fight the best, fight everybody, and I want to leave this sport knowing I did that, as I try to put together a Hall of Fame career.”
Also on the Saturday card, Terrell Gausha (18-0, nine KOs), a 2012 Olympian and middleweight from Cleveland, meets New York’s Steven Martinez (16-2, 13 KOs).
“I’m trying to be great at what I do,” Gausha said.
And super-middleweight Alfredo Angulo (24-5, 20 KOs) returns from a nearyearlong respite to meet Mexico City’s Freddy Hernandez (33-8, 22 KOs).
“I’m ready for this division, and I’ll prove that,” Angulo, 34, said. “I’ve restructured myself [with a new trainer] and it refreshed me. I had lost some of my hunger. Mentally, now, I’m back to who I was.”