What elite fighters did Salvador Sanchez fight prior to Wilifredo Gomez?

How elite was Wilfredo Gomez ? Hes considered the number 1 fighter of all time at Super Bantamweight. Whilst hes not known for his Featherweight career, it's still a great win over a great fighter.

Big step up ? Yes although Danny Lopez and Ruben Castillo are very good fighters. Whilst Lopez isn't as good as Gomez skill wise, hes one of the hardest hitting Featherweights of all time.

 

He beat Danny “Little Red” Lopez to win the featherweight title and successfully defended in a rematch — Lopez had made eight successful defenses, all by KO, and held the belt for 2 1/2 years or so.

By the time he fought Gomez, Sal had also made a few successful defenses including over Ruben Castillo and Juan Laporte.

His resume before winning the title has some good veterans on it but no one of major note.

 

I was going to mention Juan Laporte but at that time he was considered green, but with hindsight he turned out to be pretty good giving ATG's Nelson, Chavez, Lockridge, close competitive fights.

 

Fair play on Juan … he was around on the world-class scene for so long I had forgotten he was still a puppy at this point.

Eight months later he stopped Rocky Lockridge in two rounds and that win by him over Sanchez was looking pretty decent.

Much like at the time, I distinctly remember (before Sanchez tragically died) people raising eyebrows at Sal having such a tough time against an unknown African named Azumah Nelson. Little did we know.

(And iirc, his next fight after Nelson was supposed to be a rematch with Laporte, right?)

 

Yeah my point wasn't to discredit Sanchez as hes one of my favourite fighters, it's just no one knew how good Laporte was at that time similar to Nelson as you rightly pointed out.

To me the Nelson fight in particular I've always looked at it like this, was Nelson green ? Absolutely. But based off Nelson's performance that night how many current Featherweights at that time would of beaten Nelson ? Not too many I reckon.

For me it's similar to Witherspoon's performance against Holmes, we didn't quite know how good both fighters were in Nelson, Witherspoon. But I still give Holmes and Sanchez credit for the wins, because they went through hell against young fighters who performed out of their skin. And actually both fighters turned out to be very good fighters in Nelson's case a great one.

 

Sanchez was a great fighter,but I think he may be slightly overated today ,benefitting from the James Dean syndrome where a person dies so untimely that his deeds are somewhat inflated. I see nothing on his record that implies he was better than Pedroza.

 

There’s some truth to that, but in what sadly turned out to be a short career he had wins over Danny Lopex x2, Wilfredo Gomez (in pretty spectacular, dominant fashion), Azumah Nelson and Laporte. Not a bad collection of scalps when there was yet so much still in front of him.

Of course we don’t know how it plays out if he hadn’t died, especially had he moved up in weight which was probably inevitable. But it’s a darned good resume.

Add to that, he was on TV a lot so many of us of a certain age were exposed to him frequently. And his style was aesthetically pleasing for sure.

 

Sanchez beat better names than Pedroza.

 

Danny López absolutely was elite. One of the hardest hitters at featherweight and a long-reigning lineal champ. LaPorte turned out to be elite but was a little green, Ruben Castillo was a very good fighter too and despite being young, had a lot of experience by that point as well.

Gomez is an all-time great.

 

Well, in my opinion, you'd struggle finding ten fighters who with a more impressive offense than Wilfredo Gomez. He was a complete and utter monster at his peak. If you want to see a man get completely dominated, you see an early Gomez title defence.

Now, it was a decent sized step-up for Sanchez but not a huge one. Sanchez had already defeated an excellent featherweight and colossal puncher in Lopez; as well as outpointing both Laporte and Castillo - two cuties with tricky styles. Now, Gomez had lost a step prior to Sanchez, and he'd took his eye off the ball. He was more complacent; focused on his power more and neglected his brilliant movement. However, he was still Wilfredo Gomez and he was still an insanely good fighter. And Sanchez dismantled him.

If you wanna get a good grip on what kind of a fighter Gomez was, I specifically recommend watching his first every title fight against Yum; then watching his fights with Kobayashi; the first fight with Lopez; and if you want a thriller, the Pintor fight.

I cannot stress how unbelievably good that last one is.

 

Great post, Jorge!

 

Danny Little Red Lopez on Feb 2 1980 in Phoenix, Arizona. Sanchez stopped Lopez to win the WBC Featherweight Title by TKO 13. Lopez was a one punch knockout fighter, very explosive.

 

Horrible comparison. James Dean didn't do JACK!!!