As always with Golden Boy’s ESPN series, tonight’s middleweight headlined show lacks relevance to the top of the division. It more than makes up for that in terms of action potential, however. In the main event, New Jersey’s Glen Tapia will try to get back to his old winning ways against Philadelphia’s Gabriel Rosado over ten rounds. There is little chance for this to be a dull fight.
In truth, Gabriel Rosado’s (23-11, 13 KOs) reputation for being an action fighter can be a little inflated at times. All the blood and heart flair shown in fights where he was very much overmatched in against top middleweights isn’t his preferred approach when he can help it against lesser competition. This was in full display in his most recent outing, a narrow loss to Martin Murray in the UK during the winter that didn’t quite become the action spectacle it was supposed to be.
Glen Tapia (23-4, 15 KOs) is a different story. The Jersey fighter only knows how to attack. Given how easy he is to hit in return, Tapia draws everyone he fights into a war. He hasn’t been winning those wars, but they have been an inevitability of his style. Really, given that he has been stopped three times already, including taking an absolutely savage beating from James Kirkland in the first of those, I do question whether or not Tapia can sustain the punishment to ever win one of his action fights even against lesser opposition. The 2017 version of Gabriel Rosado might be enough to knock him from relevancy permanently.
In the co-main event, Keandre Gibson (17-1, 7 KOs) takes his second fight back from his first career loss to top contender Antonio Orozco. Gibson isn’t a bad prospect, but that night he was sort of tossed to the wolves much too soon so Golden Boy could have a compelling debut show for this very ESPN series. Here Gibson is in against Alejandro Barrera (29-3, 18 KOs), a man coming off an unexpected win over fringe contender Eddie Gomez. I like this fight a lot simply because it is a potential contender eliminator. The winner progresses very nicely while the loser is someone we can stop paying attention to for now.
The main card from the Monte Carlos Resort and Casino in Las Vegas begins at 11 PM Eastern on ESPN2 and WatchESPN.com. The streaming site also has preliminary bouts beginning at 9:30.
