By Brent Matteo Alderson

Joel Casamayor has had a stellar boxing career.  He won a Gold Medal at the 1992 Olympics in Barcelona, won the WBA 130-pound title, and currently holds the linear lightweight world championship.  In compiling a solid 36-3-1 record that has entailed bouts with Acelino Freitas, Diego Corrales, and a prime Jose Luis Castillo - it’s clear that “el Cepillo” should be considered the most successful prize fighter to come out of Cuba since Jose Napoles immigrated to Mexico. All three of Casamayor's defeats have been by close razor-thin decisions and he has consistently fought and been successful against a high caliber of opposition. 

The problem with Casamayor is that he’s 37-years old and during the course of the last three years it has become apparent that he’s past his prime.  In his last bout against the very capable yet limited Michael Katsidis, Casamayor had to score an uncharacteristic late round knockout to salvage a victory. 

In his fight prior he was unjustly awarded a decision against Jose Armando Santa Cruz.  The verdict was so horrendous that it can be classified as a legendary robbery alongside such notorious decisions as Foreman-Schultz, Tiberi-Toney, Chavez-Whitaker, Everett-Escalera, and Louis-Walcott. 

It’s just really evident that Casamayor’s time as a world class fighter is coming to an end and that he will probably lose the linear lightweight title to Juan Manuel Marquez this Saturday. 

Marquez isn’t a spring chicken at 35-years-old with over 50 fights under his belt, but Cuban boxers are famous for their partying and lack of training in between fights which generally exasperates the physical decline of a world class athlete.  Even though Juan Manuel has also reached a stage in his career where he is fighting tad wee past his peak, he’s still at an elite level and should be ranked as one of the best fighters in the world. 

To this day, Marquez hasn’t been decisively beaten and in his last three fights he looked good against Barrera, Pacquiao, and Juarez even though he probably got hit a little more than he used to. Now Casamayor is the naturally bigger man, but their size shouldn’t make much of a difference since Marquez is the naturally harder puncher.  It’s just when guys start struggling to win against good solid fighters like Katsidis and Santa Cruz, they usually lose to damn good ones like Juan Manuel.

Notes:

I’m looking forward to Casamayor-Marquez, but I can’t see the card doing more than 200,000 buys. 

Kelly Pavlik is the best American-born Caucasian fighter since Gene Fulmer. 

Remember circa 1999 when Acelino Freitas was the WBO champ, Diego Corrales was the IBF champ, Casamayor was the WBA title-holder, and Floyd Mayweather had the WBC strap - and they were all young and undefeated junior-lightweights?

To this day my Cuban buddy, Jason Diez, maintains that Casamayor would have been a very formidable opponent for Mayweather and even might have won had they fought at 130 pounds, but I disagree especially after you  compare their performances against Corrales.

Brent Matteo Alderson, a graduate of UCLA, has been part of the staff at BoxingScene.com since 2004. Alderson's published work has appeared in publications such as Ring Magazine, KO, World Boxing, Boxing 2008, and Latin Boxing Magazine. Alderson has also been featured on the ESPN Classic television program “Who’s Number One?”  Please e-mail any comments to BoxingAficionado@aol.com