In what Steve Farhood called one of the best main events in the history of the series, Yuandale Evans won a closely fought exciting war over Luis Rosa in the main event of Friday’s ShoBox. It was certainly a fun one. Prospects Junior Fa and Charles Conwell both impressed on the undercard as well.
Yuandale Evans (20-1, 14 KOs) chose to fight Luis Rosa’s (23-1, 11 KOs) fight in the main event, but he still emerged victorious and we were all better for it. The two fighters only took about thirty seconds ago before they heated up and began winging at one another for the remaining duration of the first. From there the fight would slow down and pick back up, but it was always very grueling on the inside.
The fight climaxed in the eighth round when Luis Rosa landed an excellent right hand that had Evans’s legs in all sorts of trouble. After taking a beating and seemingly maybe out on his feet for over a minute, Evans out of no where responded in the last thirty seconds with a huge right hand off the ropes to hurt Rosa. They spent the last five seconds just winging haymakers while standing still in the middle of the ring. Evans had to be near carried back to the corner despite his big finish.
Evans went on to win on scores of 96-94, 97-93, and 94-96, making it a split decision which made sense for such an excellent fight.
The co-main event was the one dud of the night. In the fight Russian prospect Radzhab Butaev (8-0, 6 KOs) and his extensive amateur background picked up the win over unbeaten Colombian Janer Gonzalez (19-1-1, 15 KOs) and his typically inflated knockout record, but he looked like a middling prospect along the way. Their styles just did not mesh and little interesting happened for most of the eight rounds.
New Zealand’s Junior Fa (13-0, 8 KOs) made an impressive ShoBox debut in the second fight of the evening. It basically took one flurry along the ropes to put Fred Latham (9-1-2, 5 KOs) out on his feet to give the Pittsburgh heavyweight his first career loss. Given that Fa looked sharp here and holds a pair of amateur wins over current WBO heavyweight titleholder Joseph Parker, he is definitely a heavyweight prospect to watch.
Charles Conwell (6-0, 5 KOs), a 2016 US Olympian, received his first real exposure opening the show by battering a very game Roque Zapata (4-2-3) around the ring for six rounds. Conwell scored several knockdowns and was on the verge of a stoppage for nearly the entire second half of the fight, but he tried to force it a bit and it didn’t come. Conwell looks like a solid, steady prospect, but maybe not the great looking one like a lot of his 2016 Olympic peers.
