This Saturday in Las Vegas, fight fans will be treated to a young talented fighter as, the 20 year old, Frankie “Pitbull” Gomez (14-0 with 11 KOs) squares off against, the 30 year old, “The Fighting Fireman” Lanard Lane (13-2 with 8 KOs) at a catch weight of 143. This is the type of fight where both men have shown they have stoppage ability and they should both be aggressive as they try to make a bigger name for themselves; so this could be much better than televised. Gomez is being pushed pretty hard as a future star while Lane is trying to capitalize quickly and get a title shot, as he is already 30 years old and looking to gain the most out of his boxing career.
Frankie Gomez is a young, up and coming, Mexican fighter, signed with Golden Boy Promotions, that Oscar De La Hoya personally was paying attention to when he was in the amateurs. His amateur background is filled with achievements as he went 120-8 with multiple National Championships and has been called a future star by Oscar himself. He has shown big power ability and has stopped almost all of his 14 opponents over his not even 3 year career thus far. He also has a nice 74 inch reach which give him an advantage against almost all other opponents in this division. He hopes to be impressive and continue on his way to the top of the welterweight division. The biggest knock on him is he hasn’t faced any true competition as of yet, so he’s mostly built off his amateur status.
Lanard Lane is a very confident, almost cocky, tough fighter, who is advised by Al Haymon. He only has 2 blemishes on his record, 1 being a controversial loss to Joseph Elegele, and the other to Mike Dallas Jr., a guy we just saw Lucas Matthysse destroy. However, Lane stated on Tha Boxing Show radio show stated he was not in the correct state of mind with issues going on with his girlfriend, yet he took the fight. He also stated that he will go toe to toe with the heavy hitting Gomez. He feels that his previous experience against better competition will give him a big advantage over Gomez, even the losses. Lane’s biggest motivation is that he feels with a win here, he’ll be only a couple fights away from a title shot, mentioning Paulie Malignaggi by name.
I hope Lane backs up this talk and this ends up being a good fight. At worst, I hope he fights better than his predictions, as he said he thought Mike Dallas Jr. would challenge Matthysse last week and that didn’t work out too well. This is 1 of those fights that can go either way. In my mind if it’s stopped early, it’s probably a Gomez stoppage, but if it goes the distance, it’s usually hard to win a decision from a Haymon fighter when a possible title shot maybe near. I feel that I’m going to take the plunge and pick Gomez by 6<sup>th</sup> rd TKO. There may not be a big fight this Saturday, so this will give us fight fans an opportunity to watch either a future star in Frankie Gomez or a future title challenger in Lanard Lane. Either way, this will definitely be an interesting fight to catch, enjoy the fights.
