By Mark Vester
According to trainer Lee Beard, former champion Joan Guzman is going to remain in the junior welterweight division and he plans to target all of the big names, including Amir Khan, Marcos Maidana, Tim Bradley and Devob Alexander. In March Guzman was nine-pounds over for his scheduled lightweight title bout against Ali Funeka. He won a unanimous decision, but his issues with weight has hurt his ability to get back on American television.
Beard says Guzman feels good at junior welterweight and making the divsion limit will not be a problem for him.
"Everything's fine with Guzman. He should be coming over any week now. His manager is working on a fight now and he's definitely going to move up in weight. He was already thinking about moving up after the Funeka fight anyway," Beard said to Sky Sports.
"Everything was fine, he was big before training started, I only had six hard weeks with him. He was on schedule, I wrote down where he needed to be, when he needed to lose the weight. He needed to be 10lb off a week before the fight and he was, and I didn't check his weight on the Monday because (conditioning coach) Kerry Kayes was coming over (to Las Vegas) on the Tuesday, and it turns out he'd put four or five pounds on!
"Kerry was going to bring him back down, but Guzman only has to look at food and he puts weight on. He has to be very strict on himself and if he had one bad meal and the wrong drink there was no chance he was going to make it. By the morning of the weigh-in he'd put all the weight back on."
Getting one of the big names in the ring won't be easy. Guzman is a high risk opponent who doesn't bring a big check to the table. Beard is confident Guzman has the talent to beat all of the top guys at junior welterweight.
"Guzman's a big risk with little reward," said Beard. "Remember he chased (Manny) Pacquiao all the way up from super-bantamweight and after he beat Humberto Soto he was promised the fight after that. He's a two-weight champion but he can't get the bigger fights."
"Talent-wise he's up there with them all. He'll fight next at 140lbs and we'll see what we can get after that. I think he's the perfect size for 140, he's got a real strong core and he's really strong. Guzman likes people to come forward and he's extremely fast, he's got great footwork and he's very difficult to hit."
"He wanted the (Tim) Bradley fight but it goes back to who wants to fight him? He's capable of beating all those guys and there's not a lot of people with Guzman's talent, he knows how to make people miss and he's very explosive with his punches."
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