Former Champs Cuellar and Guerrero Were in Action Last Week, But Under the Radar

Former world champions Jesus Cuellar and Robert Guerrero were in action last weekend, not that you would know it.

Cuellar and Guerrero fought on the Porter-Ugas card at the Dignity Health Sports Park (formerly the StubHub Center) in Carson, CA. Their untelevised bouts were classified as preliminaries, but that’s a misnomer as a “preliminary” is something that goes before and their bouts went on after the main event and the mass exodus that followed on a very chilly night. Had you searched the web for the results of their fights, you would have likely come up empty until late Sunday morning.

Cuellar

Jesus Cuellar, a 33-year-old Argentine southpaw, won the WBA featherweight title in August of 2013 and made five successful defenses before losing the belt to Abner Mares on a split decision. He was coming off the worst loss of his career, having been blasted out in the third round by the beastly Gervonta Davis.

Cuellar needed a confidence-booster and Columbia’s Carlos Padilla fit the bill. Padilla was 16-9-1 but had been stopped seven times. Make that eight as Cuellar knocked him out in the second round, improving to 29-3 with his 22^nd knockout.

Cuellar hopes that his good showing launches him into a match with veteran Yuriorkis Gamboa who is also a former WBA world featherweight champion. However, his win over hapless Padilla adds no luster to that potential matchup.

Guerrero

Robert “The Ghost” Guerrero (pictured) won world titles at 126, 130, 135, and an interim title at welterweight. He retired on July 17, 2017, after suffering a very bad loss at the hands of Omar Figueroa Jr., but reconsidered and returned to the ring after an absence of almost 17 months.

In his first fight back this past December he was thrust against Adam Mate, a third-rate fighter from Hungary who had been stopped nine times, seven times in the opening round. Guerrero took him out in two. On Saturday in Carson he met a man cut from a similar cloth in Columbia’s Hevenson Herrera who had been stopped 10 times. Herrera quit on his stool after five lopsided rounds.

No one has followed Guerrero’s career more closely than TSS West Coast Bureau Chief David Avila who was there when “The Ghost” made his pro debut in Indio, CA, in 2001 one month after his 18th birthday. After Guerrero’s loss to Figueroa that prompted Guerrero’s (short-lived) retirement, Avila made this observation: “The man that Figueroa defeated was not the same man who won multiple world titles in multiple weight divisions. The heart was there but the physical abilities were not the same ultra-athletic abilities I first saw in 2001.”

Avila would argue that Robert Guerrero, 35, has had a Hall of Fame career, but he won’t get any closer to Canastota fighting the likes of Adam Mate and Hevenson Herrera and if history is any guide his final fight will be another bad loss, one that likely ruins whatever chance he may have had. A deeply spiritual man with strong family values, we hope he walks away from the sport before that day comes.

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Robert Guerrero hails from Gilroy, California, a place that proudly proclaims it is the garlic capitol of the world. Whenever I think of Gilroy, I’m reminded of something that Randall “Tex” Cobb once said.

Asked what his strategy was for a particular opponent, the colorful Cobb said he planned to eat a lot of garlic before entering the ring and then breathe on his opponent in the clinches until the fellow turned away in revulsion, whereupon he would crack him in the jaw.

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