Maldonado faces critical challenge on Friday
Super lightweight title will be at stake
Both in and out of the gym, Fidel Maldonado Jr. has done his homework.
The exam comes Friday night.
At the gym behind his home in southeast Albuquerque, Maldonado Jr. (24-3-1, 19 knockouts) has been preparing for his crucial fight Friday against Venezuela’s Ismael Barroso (191-2, 18 KOs) at Fantasy Springs Casino in Indio, Calif. The WBA Fedelatin super lightweight title will be at stake.
Away from the gym, Maldonado has done some research. In an interview this week, he noted that fellow New Mexican and fellow southpaw Austin Trout won the Fedelatin junior middleweight title in September 2009. Two fights and 17 months later, Trout won the WBA world title.
“Hopefully, I can do the same thing,” he said.
If Barroso represents a steppingstone, it’s a treacherous one. The 34-year-old Venezuelan is a former WBA interim lightweight champion. His only loss came in his last outing, a seventh-round knockout at the hands of England’s Anthony Crolla for the WBA title.
Barroso is aggressive, Maldonado said, and his knockout ratio says all that’s needed to be said about his power.
“He likes to pressure, but from a distance,” Maldonado said. “He likes to keep his distance and throw his left hand, so we’ve been working on that.”
Like Maldonado, Barroso is left-handed. Some southpaws, fighting predominantly righthanders, struggle with fellow unorthodox boxers.
Again, the homework has been done.
Fidel Maldonado Sr., his son’s manager and trainer, imported George Rincon, a southpaw and a former Golden Gloves national amateur champion from Carrollton, Texas, as a sparring partner.
“He (provided) really good work,” Maldonado Jr. said.
Maldonado holds a November 2013 victory over Luís Ramos Jr., another southpaw, and has sparred in the past with New Mexico left-handers Trout, Joaquin Zamora and Vincent Mirabal.
In June, Maldonado scored perhaps the most impressive victory of his career — a splitdecision verdict over Pablo César Cano in Arlington, Texas. Against the hard-punching Cano, Maldonado survived a fourth-round knockdown and outboxed the Mexican fighter over 10 rounds.
It was a breakthrough for Maldonado, who sometimes in the past engaged in brawls and failed to use the boxing skills he’d been developing since he took up the sport more than a decade ago.
“My whole mindset has changed,” he said. “I’ve always had the skills. Now, my team has brought them out and made me use them, instead of fighting stupid.”
There has been some confusion