Yoel Romero, God's Greatest General
Very few fighters change their opponent’s fate once, the way Yoel Romero has changed fates for a living.
If there’s a place to look for reason in his latest title shot (and there isn’t), that might be it: Romero has been edged out in two consecutive contests, but the undeniable mystique of the Soldier of God is still there, as the men who faced him have invariably come out different due to the experience. On his way to becoming one of the greatest middleweights of all time and one of the very best never to officially hold a belt, Romero has broken great fighters over his knee, in moments so devastating that their primes seemed to drain out before the public’s very eyes.
In comparison, it’s even more striking how long the prime of the man himself has lasted; in the tenth year of his career and on the cusp of 43 years old at the date of his scheduled title shot against Israel Adesanya, Romero hasn’t shown an ounce of physical decay. In fact, his greatest performances came well past 40, which is unheard of at a division with the turnover of middleweight (turnover that Romero himself has largely engineered). If there’s a short way to put it, it’s that Romero has stolen the time that everyone he faced would’ve had left.
With a very respectable combat-sports career before entering MMA, Romero’s development in the sport and his persistent eliteness is truly anomalous, and it leaves him a threat for any champion even if his opportunity isn’t necessarily warranted. Regardless of opponent, one would be very unwise to look over Yoel Romero, who has proven to always be either the stage of his opponent’s hardest loss or of their hardest-fought triumph.
Dangerously Raw
Off a career as an accomplished wrestler on the world stage culminating in a freestyle wrestling Olympic Silver medal in 2000, Yoel Romero’s style has benefitted far more from the threat of the level change than of the actual act of wrestling; while Romero has shown an array of throws and one summary finish from the takedown, he hasn’t made use of his (ostensibly) greatest tool particularly often at the elite level. In fact, in some of his fights, Romero has functioned more like a counter-wrestler; he’s proven most dangerous throughout his career as a striker, and his wrestling credentials precluded an easy out from that arena for his opponent. That said, his early showings were not the Romero that he’d eventually become.
Markes
Ronny Markes is not particularly notable, as an opponent should be in someone’s second UFC outing. Romero had debuted in the UFC in a very Romero way, pulling the even-less-notable Clifford Starks into a clean flying knee, but it was fairly difficult to know whether this was a function of athleticism or actual craft from a career wrestler. As the Markes fight showed, against a blank canvas, even the nascent 36-year-old Romero could do some pretty interesting things.
For the first bit of the fight, Romero stood at range trading leg kicks, but he found his first meaningful connection off the typical wrestler changeup (albeit from southpaw). Markes was hyper-keyed on the takedown attempt every time Romero stepped in (even if it wasn’t an actual level-change, just Romero moving forward and becoming slightly less upright), and Romero capitalized with a clean left hand. He immediately tried the same thing again, since it worked.
Romero has good ideas, even this early in his career; exiting on an angle off his straight to take himself away from Markes’ rear hand, feinting forward to push Markes back, and using the lead-leg low kick to grab the classic outside angle for the southpaw-straight. Defensively, Romero is mostly backing up at this point; he has good eyes forced into exchanges, especially as Markes looked to catch him with massive and looping shots (enough to throw himself off-balance trying to counter Yoel’s straight-left), but he got caught a bit bare as Markes committed to throwing fast down the center.
The same dynamic continued, with Romero using the level-change (once even dropping to a knee) to conceal his offense, and building off his previous leg-kicking by aiming a powerful one to the body. The finish was crafty; Romero uses the level-change to get in on a combination to Markes’ body, then drops his weight again to clobber him with an overhand.
At this point, Romero was just “athletic southpaw wrestleboxer”, but there are spots of sharpness here. These only developed as his career continued, into more recognizable and difficult names across from him.
Machida
After beating up the classic gatekeepers at 185 in Derek Brunson/Brad Tavares/Tim Kennedy, Romero got his opportunity at a more well-known test; Lyoto Machida was somewhat built to defeat unpolished pressurers, as a strong outside-kicker and counterpuncher who was legitimately tough to cut off. Romero drew Machida off his loss to Luke Rockhold, a legitimately nasty one, and after the Romero fight, Machida took two years off and came back to lose to Brunson; somewhere in those two fights before the layoff, any semblance of his former self was lost, and the point where Romero fired elbows through his head to bounce it off the floor seems as good a guess as any.
A good deal of the first two rounds went this way. Romero isn’t usually a committed outside-kicker, but he does a lot of things as one-offs, and he and Machida floated around in open-space trading kicks. Romero’s lead-leg kicking is nice, and as Ali Bagov shows, it can have some good utility to wrestlers (and the finish shows it to some extent as well); while much of Romero’s kicking was just a gimmick and a dangerous one at that, he was able to start using the preliminary motion of switch-kicking to feint into range reasonably early in the fight.
The reason Romero couldn’t just run Machida down was this sort of counterpunching; Machida isn’t anything in extended exchanges offensively nor defensively, but he can punish fighters looking to crush distance haphazardly. Here, Romero looks to feint a jab to enter but gets intercepted by a knee, then seems to want to use the same motion as his lead-leg kicking to enter into an exchange but is too close for that to be credible and Machida responds accordingly.
Intermittently (and growing more frequently through round 2), though, Romero fought Machida the way someone smart would. Romero did a great job drawing out and punishing Machida’s most venomous counter; he’d feint an entry from the closed-stance and pull out Machida’s straight (designed for opponents actually overcommitting into entries, as someone like Bader did), deflect it or roll under it proactively, and come back with his own left hand as Machida looked to exit. Wasn’t done perfectly every time, but the idea was there to punish Machida working on that trigger.
Through round 2, Romero started pressuring steadily as he kept his feet underneath him, feinting Machida backwards to make his counters less accessible and building into strikes as Lyoto was too close to the fence to drop back.
Romero’s tools were athletically weird, he still didn’t have a real defensive system to deal with Machida simply lashing out and hitting him, but there was a definite method to his madness; for example, in the final instance, he leapt off the fence to chase Machida down, but then immediately doubled on his left hand to cut Machida’s exit off (as one would expect from a more seasoned pressurer).
The finish was enabled more by his initial work than by the smarter things he went on to do, but a finish nevertheless. Romero shifting forward into the clinch was covered by his consistent switch-kicking, as the hopping entry was at least initially similar to that motion; Romero got to the over-under and threw Machida over his knee, got into half-guard, and sneaked in short elbows as Machida tried to control his posture. This ended the fight.
Romero/Machida was an odd fight, where Yoel seemed to figure out the idea of pressuring the distance-kicker midfight. It did teach a few important lessons about him, though. One, Romero is smart and adaptive strategically; a midfight commitment to pressure after spending a round to kick with a kicker is unique in that way. Two, Romero is smart and adaptive tactically; he feinted entries with intention to pull out counters, he lever-punched as Machida circled, and he really had the fight figured by the end. Three, despite committing to technical improvement, Romero still had and relied upon his greatest competitive edge: an incredible margin of error due to athleticism that hasn’t otherwise been seen in the UFC.
Finally, even despite being as fast as anyone when he wanted to be, as powerful as they get, and virtually impossible to hurt, the scariest thing about Romero was that he was clearly still improving; he was learning to dictate exchanges and stay safe (at least when he had an idea in mind of what he was drawing out), learning to pressure soundly and stay positionally viable, learning to set up his wrestling with his strikes, all against the best in the world. As he climbed into the true elite, this remained important.
Weidman
One fight removed from being champion of the world, Chris Weidman’s fight against Romero was meant to be a homecoming; for the first event in NYC, “The All-American” and New York’s biggest star drew Yoel Romero as his comeback fight. Again, Romero faced an opponent directly off a loss to Luke Rockhold; Weidman had failed in his title defense and took an ugly drubbing at Rockhold’s hands, on the same card as Romero’s triumph (technically) over Ronaldo “Jacare” Souza. Nevertheless, Weidman was skilled; the Silva-killer was a capable boxer and sound pressure-fighter with a strong wrestling background himself, and unlike Romero, had shown a strong top-game as well. He’d fought five-rounds before, in a great title-defense against Lyoto Machida, and Romero’s cardio was rightfully doubted as he worked in short hellish bursts.
None of the above ended up mattering. Like Machida, Romero achieved in an explosion of physicality what Rockhold did over a longer period of time; Weidman was also on his way out of the elite, sustaining hard losses to Gegard Mousasi and Ronaldo “Jacare” Souza afterwards, and Romero leaving a literal bloody dent in his head was at least a contributing factor.
As usual in Weidman’s losses, he started out fighting a fairly sharp fight; as a man with more experience in open-stance matchups than any orthodox not named Tyron Woodley, Weidman had a grasp of how to get where he wanted against the Cuban. He mostly played an inverted southpaw-double-attack, throwing the straight a few times and trying to use that to set up volume-bodykicking, and using both threats to cover his entry into the high-crotch.
Where Romero started content to simply scramble out of Weidman’s takedowns, he went into round 2 a bit keener to take them away and punish Weidman on the feet for trying to set them up. It was a quite wrestling-heavy fight, but it was clear that Romero had the edge; pulling back his leg as he saw Weidman’s entries coming, cleanly outscrambling him, and proving himself to be the best clinch-wrestler at 185 with one of the slickest front-trips that MMA has seen.
However, the finish came due to a tendency that Romero likely noted in round 1 as it continued to round 2; as Romero himself changed levels, Weidman looked to mirror it, dropping his weight preemptively to defend the takedown. Romero faked the level change to pull Weidman’s head down, and sent his knee up to meet it.
Romero/Weidman seemed like a return-to-basics for Romero, against an opponent who took him on in what was previously thought to be his main area of competence; Weidman could strike but wanted to wrestle, and Romero made that fruitless. Weidman challenged him on the feet with his volume, but wasn’t defensively sound nor varied enough to avoid the consequences of the one read Romero needed. As a fight, it was more meaningful as Romero’s title eliminator than it was as a step-up that forced him to show something new. The man who would eventually force novelty out of Romero was up next for him.
A Turning Point: Whittaker I
If there’s a single most important fight to Yoel Romero’s career and his development, it would incontrovertibly be his first (and technically only, to date) opportunity to win a title; at UFC 213, Yoel Romero went against Robert Whittaker to win the interim middleweight title, on its face for a chance to face Michael Bisping to unify the belts. To most, Romero/Whittaker 1 was the real belt in spirit; Bisping had won the belt in a massive upset on short notice, so he was less the best in the world and more a crafty veteran who nicked the belt at the end of his career. The winner at 213 was meant to be the man to carry the division forward; while Romero did not prove to be that man, he compromised Whittaker’s ability to play the same role in a fight that left “The Reaper” out for a year, and his loss spurred him to become totally different as a fighter.
Romero started the fight throwing linear kicks at Whittaker’s knee. This wasn’t out of character for Romero, although he traditionally favored doing it with his rear leg (the Jones staple) rather than the leaping lead-leg variant shown here; what made it smart to deal with Robert Whittaker was the fact that Whittaker’s entries generally relied on him being able to close distance fast and exit similarly fast.
This made the low-line kick useful, in hampering an athletically-dependent style that often thrived on quick linear entries (even if Whittaker could cut angles later in the exchange), and Romero’s attempts to immediately place a barrier between them and compromise Whittaker’s mobility worked. Also, a bonus hook-kick off the same side-on entry, which is a set-up that may not have ever been seen in MMA before.
That said, this was easily the most committed wrestling performance of Romero’s career; he seemed to want to bank the first few rounds of the 5-round bout with control, and that was how he fought rounds 1 and 2. Whittaker gave him fits throughout the fight as he tried to wrestle with his terrific balance and gripfighting, but Romero proved tenacious enough to force the issue early in the bout; he did nothing with control, but could shoot reactively as Robert threw his straight and even found an inside-trip late.
What changed it was Whittaker’s new commitment to kicking the body of Romero, turning the tables on the same concept that Romero used earlier. Romero was similarly bursting as a fighter, with less nuance at this point than Whittaker had; Whittaker’s lead-leg injury left the jab harder to fire with authority, but his switch to a long rear-kick enforced a distance that Romero couldn’t comfortably push or shoot through.
As the fight developed, Whittaker used the kick almost like a really sharp boxer would use a jab; he couldn’t mix the target up, but he could feint into it to mix up the timing and intercept Romero’s forward movement with it, and switch between lunging into a shoving kick and just a snapkick with the ball of his foot. He could use the initial motion as a throwaway or a feint to enter or pressure, and punch directly off it. It’s hard to overstate the impressiveness of this adjustment; Whittaker found a way to replace a fundamental component of his striking built on lack of commitment with something completely different in every way, and made it work.
Romero’s conditioning issues finally came to bear significance in this fight, but the bodykicking was just one part of it; the other was Whittaker’s comfort and defensive-poise in exchanges, as Whittaker could push Romero back and pour on volume if he wanted to. Whittaker’s use of the front-kick to enter hid his entries into the straight well, and he put Romero on the fence and swarmed on a number of occasions late in the fight.
Whittaker isn’t a natural pressurer, but his success came from his ability to make Romero respect the threat of the front-kick after a few rounds of attrition and sit in the pocket and counterpunch if Romero swung back (as seen by that outside-slip into uppercut in response to Romero’s jab to try to back him off).
It was a legitimately brilliant fight from Whittaker, a career-defining one that showed his heart and his mind under the greatest of stresses; while Romero’s defense was raw against every one of his opponents and doubly so to the body, Whittaker was the first man with the guts and the brain to effectively systematize an attack in response. For Romero, it was a return to the drawing board; in the minds of the public, he was all but the champion before the fight, but the young Aussie had turned the title scene upside-down. What Yoel needed was a reinvention, and he found it.
Subtlety, Packaged In Bombast
After Whittaker 1, Romero seemed to realize that his game of energy conservation wouldn’t work without serious changes technically; against a volume-striker who could reliably stay safe forcing exchanges, Romero needed a way (that wasn’t just unpolished craft) to make those exchanges more dangerous. In 2018, Romero got his chances to showcase those changes; first, in a short-notice bout against former champion and divisional-great Luke Rockhold, and second, in a rematch with Robert Whittaker.
Rockhold
Romero had come up the division picking up what one could reasonably consider the battered husks Luke Rockhold left behind. A terrifically offensively-potent fighter with some of the best scrambling in MMA and a power-kicking game, Rockhold’s reputation suffered mostly from the loss to Michael Bisping at UFC 199; a massive upset, Rockhold’s lack of comfort in the pocket was shown up in a rematch with an opponent he’d already dismissed in a wide fight years prior. Facing Romero on fairly-short-notice as Whittaker pulled out of his fight with Rockhold citing a nasty infection, Rockhold was eligible to win the interim belt; Romero, coming in three pounds heavy, was not eligible to win that belt. There would be no championship unveiled in Perth that night.
Romero’s biggest coup in this fight was his defense, as Rockhold struggled mightily to land clean strikes on the shorter wrestler. Romero being a southpaw took away the open-stance for both, which hurt Rockhold (a prolific body-head kicker) a lot more; the target left to him, the lead-leg, was protected well by Romero’s diligent checking.
Rockhold’s rear-hand met with a tighter high-guard but also a more reactive set of blocks that kept Romero insulated very well. Defense to the body, still not really there, but the same goes for essentially every fighter in MMA.
Rockhold’s best success came through jabbing, a tool he’s neither comfortable with nor particularly great at using; it was a low-commitment tool to keep Romero’s defense working, but that was all it was. Romero’s lack of a defensive system earlier in his career is in stark contrast to what is seen here; Romero got hit by a few jabs, but he’s also actively parrying them off the centerline, or handfighting to stifle the jab and pull sloppier rear-hands out of Luke instead, and getting ready to defend the rear-hands the jab was setting up even if they landed.
This was the best boxer Rockhold had ever been, it was a genuine improvement, and Romero made it look like nothing.
Some of Romero’s offensive success came through some kicking at range with Rockhold, but more came with massive committed blitzes that showed the problem with Rockhold’s footwork; while he developed the ability to pivot offensively, his defensive footwork was still a straight retreat to look for the check-hook, and Yoel punished it.
Note Romero’s doubling of the left hand to help push Luke back and change the rhythm of the charge, as well as Rockhold’s default to the clinch where he didn’t have an answer to Romero taking a page from the book of Rick Story.
The final bit of the fight saw Romero switch focus in brilliant fashion. Rockhold’s ability to double and triple on the jab (to buy time to circle and occupy Romero’s vision as he defended with blocks/parries) was taken away by Romero suddenly deciding to start slipping inside and landing cross-counters or outside to counter-jab. Romero did a better job playing with the rhythm and target of the jab than Rockhold did, pawing it out more slowly (to draw out the counter-knee, for instance) or snapping it on the counter to the head or the body. He played it off the right hook for one more clean connection, and his pressure behind the jab hit the golden-mean between inertia and a frenzy.
Finally, Romero used it to draw counters to punish, and that’s what got him the finish. Yoel jabbed once hard, prompting Rockhold to pull his head over his heels with nowhere to go; he jabbed a second time to convince Rockhold to use his check-hook; he launched the straight, and Rockhold was gone. The second jab was a throwaway to fire the left-hand offbeat quick behind it, and Rockhold’s committed and predictable reaction was just what Yoel expected to send the straight down the middle as he slipped inside the hook.
In a way, Rockhold/Romero could be seen as an elevated Machida/Romero; Romero spent some time on the outside with a kicker, he started pressuring smartly, and he ended the fight by coming out with a defined idea of what he wanted out of round 3 against a fighter more dangerous than Machida (even if his ringcraft is worse). In a way, it was worse from a traditionalist sense; Romero’s volume was a lot less consistent from the outside, he seemed less worried about the counter, and he didn’t try to wrestle a bit.
Where it was a massive improvement was in Romero’s overall boxing, as his athleticism wasn’t a margin he relied on but a conduit for genuine technical brilliance. Romero’s defensive holes were mostly closed, even though it was tested against the closest middleweight had to a boxing blank-slate; Rockhold was no joke, he did some smart things, and yet he struggled to land a glove. Romero’s jab through a single minute commanded the fight more thoroughly than Rockhold’s did in the previous ten combined. He gave the best Rockhold ever a boxing lesson, and (naturally) Rockhold was never the same; Luke took a year-and-a-half off to return at lightheavyweight, and his improvements for 221 were replaced by the imponderable sluggishness of age and injury. Nevertheless for Romero, it was then time to get back the boxing lesson Whittaker gave to him.
Whittaker II
After Romero 1, Robert Whittaker didn’t fight again until Romero 2; he tried, as he was booked against Luke Rockhold on home soil, but the fight fell through due to an infection. Between the knee injury he sustained mid-fight and the circumstances afterwards, Whittaker’s first title defense was scheduled over a year after he won the title and about half-a-year after it was promoted to being the undisputed belt (after Saint-Pierre kept the lineal belt for himself after defeating Michael Bisping). Upon his return, he had to contend with an immediate do-over with the Cuban.
Of course, Whittaker was favored fairly heavily going in; beating Rockhold mattered, but as the fight showed, Rockhold wasn’t Whittaker. Rockhold would’ve been more outright dangerous for Romero to try to wrestle, but he was also not in the same tier as Whittaker in terms of counterpunching or outside-footwork or defense in the pocket. As such, Romero’s improvements didn’t appear to necessarily have a great deal of scope; outjabbing Rockhold is well and good, but outjabbing Robert Whittaker would be a different story altogether. Nevertheless, the fight was booked, and Romero missed weight a second time; Robert Whittaker took the fight anyway, even though it wouldn’t constitute a title defense, and it was a decision that could’ve costed him his career.
Whittaker played a linear-kick game in the rematch too, but mostly to Romero’s legs this time; Not only did Whittaker have new answers to the kicks that hobbled him the first time (drawing his lead leg back and lefthooking, for instance), he also used them himself.
With his entire body intact (for the time being), Whittaker could play his distance-keeping tools off one another; firing his lead leg to the body or to Romero’s knee, and using it with the dipping-jab to enforce a distance that Romero couldn’t penetrate easily. Romero fighting the rematch orthodox left the jab with an easier route, but it did cause some trouble for Whittaker later in the fight; however, as always, Romero started slow, and the first two rounds were wide for Whittaker.
In fact, Romero’s newfound defensive-system was arguably even more important here than it was against Rockhold; Whittaker’s educated offense was a test it didn’t pass as consistently, as Whittaker had more than one tool to work the body (the combo at the end of round 1 as gorgeous, flashing the jab to draw the high guard and roasting him underneath), but one of the connections with Romero’s flared elbow did shatter Whittaker’s rear hand. Generally, Romero’s tight high-guard kept his head safe, though.
As usual, where Romero turned the fight was in round 3; after a slow low-volume 1 and 2, Romero executed on what seemed like a Whittaker-specific adaptation. As he did with Rockhold’s jab, Romero stormed out in round 3 committed to countering nearly every linear-kick Whittaker threw.
Specifically, Romero seemed to key heavily on the left hook as the answer; mitigating some of the impact of the low-line kick by pulling his knee out of the way and looking for the left hook as Whittaker was out of position, trying to left hook off Whittaker’s jab (and trying to uppercut him, looking to preempt Whittaker’s dip), and finally looking to left hook over top of the front-kick. The last one worked because Whittaker didn’t land the teep exactly clean; Romero took a deep step forward into a more bladed stance than usual as Whittaker kicked (as a square target gives the push-kick a more stable and larger target), so the kick glanced across Romero’s midsection rather than providing a barrier that pushed them apart, and Romero took advantage with a left hook that herded Whittaker into a thunderous right hand.
Yoel’s never been known for consistency. and after a frantic round 3 that Whittaker barely survived, round 4 returned to being somewhat of a facsimile of round 1 and 2; Whittaker was hurt but he was still there, pecking away. Same sort of linear kicking to obstruct Romero’s forward path, but Whittaker’s premium in this round seemed to be on defense; one-handed and in with a Romero who smelled blood, Whittaker threw the right a few times to keep Romero from picking up on the injury, but spent much of the round playing a cautious game behind the jab. For example. proactively getting behind his shoulders as Romero threw his counters, or catching and shoulder-rolling Romero’s counter-combos.
Where Whittaker once again ran into trouble was with extending exchanges behind the shift, which worked in the first fight to push Yoel back but not against a Romero so keyed on the left hook. Whittaker broke stance, and ran right into a counter that evoked an awful wobble from the champ. He may have won the round, but it didn’t end well, and he couldn’t get away with one wayward spot of aggression without Romero putting him on ice.
Whittaker survived round 4, but round 5 was harder, and this is where the stance switch came back into play. Romero spending most of the fight orthodox left him with a power-jab and a crushing left hook, but it also could’ve ultimately been to set up this final trap. It didn’t ultimately win him the fight, but it came very close.
Whittaker continued to play a more careful game at range, and took the risk of entering with a straight-right; it landed partially, and Romero responded by grabbing a collar-tie and throwing a right that Whittaker looked off. What Robert missed was that Romero shifted through the right, re-entering southpaw. Whittaker threw a jab and looked to weave under Romero’s return as he had before, to take himself past Yoel’s lead-shoulder, but as he popped up, Romero had simply followed him; Whittaker had weaved in the direction of Romero’s now rear-hand, and paid dearly for it as Romero bludgeoned him.
Romero lost a tight split, which was probably better for the division as he had missed weight; Whittaker was still the legitimate champion, due to the points he accrued in 1/2/4 as Romero took his time off. But the cracking fight forced Whittaker out of action for another year afterwards, and as he went from Rulebender to Stylebender, Whittaker sustained the most conclusive loss of his career.
Romero may not be the man to point to if Whittaker declines further, as for all his undeniably admirable greatness, “The Reaper” proved as physically brittle as he was mentally tough; Whittaker breaking everything and sustaining a hernia that pulled him out of UFC 234 can’t reasonably be put all on Yoel. But the mileage he accrued was real and formidable, and there’s a good chance Romero performing out of his skin took Whittaker out of his prime in a win. As for Romero, he also returned a year later, and looked (even in a tight loss to the marauding Paulo Costa) as timeless an athlete as he ever has.
Concluding Thoughts
Yoel Romero isn’t just a top-middleweight, nor just one of those “top fighters never to win a belt”; while he is both of those things, they both struggle to fully define what has left him so special in a field so violent. Any sort of brief description would, in fact; Romero’s career and development has proven as complex as his game has become in the process. Even without winning the belt, Romero has a case for being the greatest middleweight ever; the generation that followed Silva, Weidman and the Strikeforcers, all fell to his craft and physicality, and his case for winning the Whittaker rematch elevates him even further. His form at 225 also has a case for being (along with Chad Mendes at UFC 179) one of the scariest title-challengers, in a manner of speaking, to ever fight; as a synthesis of his natural intelligence as a fighter and all the discrete skills he picked up along the way, it was legitimately brilliant. Also in terms of late-career revivals, Romero’s might be the most compelling; a 40-year-old learning all the skills he did to give a young bright champion absolute hell is a story that should be lauded more than it is.
If Adesanya beats a version of Romero that looks to have kept what made him so dangerous, it would be one of the best wins ever; if Romero finds a way to win, he’d have an argument for being one of the greatest, period. One might not give Romero a great chance, with everything working against him; a smart and capable champion, his age and time in the game, the mileage he sustained on his last run. All that would be completely fair, a reason to completely disregard the chances of anyone else; however, it has historically been the errand of only the greatest fools to count out Yoel Romero, the eater of souls and the drinker of youth.
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