By Rob Smith: Promoter Oscar De La Hoya wasn’t in the mood to pull any punches after one of his best fighters in his Golden Boy Promotions stable Jorge Linares (31-3, 20 Ko’s) suffered his second loss in a row by knockout last Saturday night against Mexican power puncher Sergio Thompson (22-2, 20 KO’s) in a disappointing 2nd round TKO loss in a WBC lightweight title eliminator bout at the Oasis Hotel Complex in Cancun, Mexico.
Although the loss was officially stopped due to a cut that Linares suffered in the 2nd round after getting knocked to the canvas by Thompson, it’s pretty clear that Linares was getting hammered and would have been knocked out shortly had the fight been allowed to continue. The ringside doctor stopped the fight immediately after Linares was knocked to the canvas. It was actually for the best because Linares wasn’t blocking any punches other than with his face and he looked like he wasn’t mentally prepared for Thompson’s all out assault.
De La Hoya, unhappy with the loss and looking for a target to blame for the defeat said on his twitter “He needs a new trainer. He has so much natural ability but has no defense. He needs a new trainer someone that is going to pay attention to his defense! He’s [Roach] too busy and I was told he didn’t train for this one…If you don’t get hit you can’t get knocked out…look at his natural ability. If he had defense he would be untouchable.”
So it looks like De La Hoya wants Linares to dump Roach. I guess it probably wouldn’t hurt to change trainers because it’s clearly not working out. Linares can stay with Roach and continue to get these kinds of results or he can go shopping for a trainer that specially is noted for training fighters not to get hit. Roach is a good trainer at teaching the offensive side of the game but I’m not so sure he’s as great at the defensive side. His fighters – Manny Pacquiao, Amir Khan, Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. and Linares – seem to get hit an awful lot in all of their fights. I wouldn’t consider any of them as being good defensive fighters or even close to being good. Roach also trains a number of other fighters but these are the main guys.
Whatever De La Hoya does for Linares, he needs to do it soon because Linares can’t keep going out and getting brained by fighters left and right. His career is sinking with each loss.