Guerrero out four months with shoulder injury

As disappointed as he was for having this weekend’s fight with Marcos Maidana postponed, Robert Guerrero will be out “only four months” after a second opinion revealed the injury was not as bad as first feared according to Dan Rafael of espn.com.

“I’m just staying positive and praying about it,” Guerrero told ESPN.com on Wednesday. “Right when I felt it, I thought, ‘This isn’t good.’ And then waking up the next day and not being about to move my arm at all, it was scary. I was doing 500 push-ups a day and about 100, 120 pull-ups, and then you can’t even move your arm. So it was scary.

“But I feel good about the test results and look forward to getting the surgery out of the way and getting my shoulder cleaned up and doing what I have to do to get back. I just got to take it one day a time, get the surgery done, get the rehab and get back to full-blown training.”

“He’ll spend two to four weeks in a sling and then can shadow box and jump rope and that sort of thing, but the doctor said he couldn’t punch on it for three or four months,” manager Bob Santos said. “So you’re looking at probably four months before he can train 100 percent. Best-case scenario is if he is back punching on it in four months and then does a six- or eight-week training camp, you’re talking about him being able to fight again in maybe February, March, April.”

“I feel helpless walking around with a sling on, especially on my dominant hand, the left hand,” Guerrero said. “I guess I got to look at the bright side. I can work on my right hand more and make it more effective in the ring. When you work with both hands, you’re more of a well-rounded fighter. I throw (the right) but there is always room for improvement. But the main focus is getting the surgery done and getting it all cleaned up and getting back to 100 percent.”

“The doctor said the arm looked fantastic except in the area where it was injured, that it had scar tissue,” Santos said. “That is probably from having an initial tear in the rotator cuff back then. So the thought is that, over time, it finally tore again.”

“We knew we weren’t going to the doctor and we were taught that if you’re hurt you block it out because you know you’re not going to the doctor,” Guerrero said. “If you can move it, it ain’t broke. That’s how we were brought up.”

“Sometimes you can do rehab, but this being the second time, we thought it was best to get it fixed because this is how he makes his living, using his arm,” Santos said. “So Dr. Dillingham said he would fix the problem and also be able to see what else, if anything, was going on in the shoulder that might not have shown up on the MRI.

“It’s really a shame this happened because I have never seen him in such great shape. We took Maidana more seriously than any fighter we have ever faced. Unfortunately, that old injury reared its head and derailed us.”

“Robert told me, ‘The more I kept thinking about it, every once in a while I would get a deep pain in (the shoulder) for the last few years,'” Santos said. “Now he knows something will be done about it. He would just say before when he felt it that he was the kind of guy who would suck it up and push through it, although this was different. I see him as relieved.”