Power play

Fighter to compete in new weight class at Saturday event

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He may be the best boxer nobody's heard of yet.

Featherweight Joan Guzman will try and increase his status in the sport of boxing Saturday night when he faces former IBF lightweight champion Javier Jauregui at the MGM Grand in a 130-pound super featherweight bout on the undercard of the Oscar De La Hoya-Ricardo Mayorga fight.

The 28-year-old Guzman (24-0, 17 KO's) is a native of the Dominican Republic who lives in New York City but came to Las Vegas three months ago to prepare for a then-scheduled WBO featherweight fight with Scott Harrison in the opponent's native Scotland in late March.

After multiple postponements and rumors of Harrison possibly pulling out of the fight again, Team Guzman made the decision to remain stateside instead of travel to Glasgow for a fight that was potentially still up in the air.

"Because of postponements in the Harrison fight from February to March and then to May, Joan had no choice but to move up (in weight) and move on," said Scott Woodworth, vice president of Sycuan Ringside Promotions, which represents Guzman.

After training in Las Vegas for his scheduled bout with Harrison and then having it scrapped, Guzman returned to New York City, where his wife, Angelica, gave birth to the couple's second child Joan Guzman Jr.

With an able boxer looking for an opponent and also looking to move up to the 130-pound super featherweight, Team Guzman and Sycuan decided to forge a strategic alliance with Golden Boy Promotions and put their boxer on the upcoming De La Hoya-Mayorga card.

Guzman's manager Jose Nunez explained why his boxer trains in Las Vegas.

"His trainer Don House lives out here," Nunez said. "We're living in Summerlin, but we're working out at Don House's House of Pain Gym in Las Vegas. The attitude is different here. He loves training here. There's good sparring here. And he's more focused out here."

In his last fight, Guzman, whose style has drawn comparisons to Alexis Arguello and Prince Naseem Hamed, defeated then-unbeaten Terdsak Jandaeng (23-1-0) by a unanimous decision on Aug. 26 at the Westchester County Center in White Plains, N.Y., to remain unbeaten.

In his previous fight, Guzman handed another undefeated boxer his first career loss when he won another unanimous decision over Fernando Beltran Jr. (26-2-1) in April 2005 at the Dodge Arena in Hidalgo, Texas.

Jauregui (51-12-2, 35 KO's), ranked sixth in super featherweight by the WBC and WBA and eighth in the lightweight class by the IBF, is coming off of two straight wins, having divided his time through the years between the junior lightweight and lightweight classes.

The 32-year-old is 4-1 since losing his IBF lightweight title to Julio Diaz two years ago and knocked out Jose Quintana (12-9-2) in his last fight held Dec. 16 in Austin, Texas.

Trying to make a name for oneself in boxing means having to lock horns with the best, and that's why Guzman and manager Nunez decided to move up to the 130-pound super featherweight class, which includes some of the bigger names in the sport, such as Erik Morales (48-4-0, 34 KO's), Marco Antonio Barerra (61-4-0, 42 KO's) and Manny Pacquiao (41-3-2, 33 KO's).

Sycuan's Woodworth thinks moving up in weight will be tough, but is the right thing for Guzman to do at this point in his career.

"Moving up to 130 pounds will be a real challenge for Joan, but as it turns out, this is his best weight, and both Sycuan Ringside Promotions and Golden Boy Promotions have every confidence he'll prove just that," Woodworth said.

Guzman's manager Nunez talked about his fighter's future.

"That was the goal (to ultimately move up a weight class to fight as a super featherweight)," Nunez said of Guzman, who also went 310-10 as an amateur. "He wants to win a title at 130. He feels he can beat these guys. They're the best right now."

Sycuan's Woodworth agrees that super featherweight is the best class for Guzman.

"It's a shame Joan couldn't show he's the best featherweight in the world," he said. "The multiple postponements of his fight against Scott Harrison for the WBO featherweight title hampered and ultimately ruined Joan's attempt to make weight. The ongoing delays and resultant disruptions in Joan's training camps now have made it impossible for him to fight as a featherweight. Try as he might, his fighting weight just couldn't and can't get below 129 or 130, let alone 126."

Moving up in weight and succeeding is nothing new to the 5-foot-7-inch Guzman, who recently moved up from the Junior Featherweight class and was once the WBO's Super Bantamweight champion.

Guzman, a former Dominican champion and gold medalist in the Pan American Games with a 67-inch reach, talked about how he felt physically heading into Saturday's bout.

"I feel great. I'm working hard," Guzman said through Nunez, who translated. "I'm working with a great trainer out here and it's easier to concentrate out here for me."

And besides trying to increase his standing as a pugilist, one of Guzman's goals is to bring a little bit of notoriety to the Dominican Republic.

"His goal is to fight for a title in whatever weight class it is and to put (his native) Dominican Republic on the map," Nunez said. "They're big on baseball, but he wants to put them big on boxing since he had the opportunity."

Now promoted by Sycuan, the only American Indian promoters in the sport, Guzman has changed his nickname from Little Tyson to Sycuan Warrior to try to put an emphasis on all his skills as a boxer rather than his ability to just knock out fighters.

Should he defeat Jauregui, Guzman, who is making his debut fighting in Las Vegas, as well as at his new weight class, may be just starting on the road to making a name for himself.

Besides the De La Hoya-Mayorga main event and the Guzman-Jauregui bout, Saturday's card also will feature a super welterweight fight between Marco Antonio Rubio and Kasim Ouma; a welterweight battle between Rock Allen and Juan Hernandez; and a super bantamweight bout featuring Jonathan Oquendo.

Also on the card, Las Vegas native and Durango High School graduate Ishe Smith (16-1, 7 KO's) is scheduled to compete in a welterweight bout. Smith made a name for himself last year on the NBC television show "The Contender" and won the Nevada State Golden Gloves championship 10 straight years, amassing a 100-17 mark along the way.

The card will be televised on HBO pay-per-view starting at 6 p.m. and costs $49.95. For information or to buy tickets for the fight, call MGM Grand Reservations at 891-7771 or (877) 880-0880.