Turn it ON. Guadalupe Rosales is trying to rip a hole into the side of Marcos Licona's head, and very well might.
You pretty much just echoed the evolution of my thoughts over the last several rounds. Rosales throws clean, hard punches but he doesn't pack that much power, and Licona's got a sturdy set of whiskers on him.
Good, rough win for Rosales. A major step up and he passed the test. There were some flashes of really good movement from him, although he did seem to understand that Marcos couldn't really hurt him and this caused him to abandon most of his angles after the first couple rounds and start plowing forward throwing wide. Even so, when Marcos tried to land anything upstairs Guadalupe was mostly able to propel away with his faster feet always ready and waiting inside Licona's. When a punch did land he hardly seemed bothered, and they certainly didn't mark him up like his much cleaner, harder shots did to Licona. Rosales seemed to have just enough respect for Licona's punches, not too much or too little. For his part Licona spent what I originally thought was way too much time looking for Rosales' body and flanks in particular, since Rosales had those elbow blocks down to a science for the first half of the fight. Licona was able to keep the pressure on round after round, however, and it did start to prove troublesome to the younger fighter in the middle stretch. Never to the point of being in jeopardy, but enough that he eased up his own offense for awhile. I see Rosales doing very well in the future if he can tell the difference between when it's okay to fight like this and when to be more cautious. I don't think it's a question of whether he can fight smarter and box and move effectively, it's just a matter of mental discipline. Wouldn't want to see him tackle the elite any time soon, but maybe after five years more of fine-tuning.
