Boxing Preview: Alejandro “Terra” Garcia – Jose Antonio Rivera

ByJaspreet Panchhi

WBA Light Middleweight Showdown Headlines a Big Don King Card On Showtime

 On Saturday 6th May, boxing promoter Don King puts on a seven fight boxing card, three of which will be for major world title belts. The card, which will be shown by Showtime, takes place at the DCU Center in Worcester, Massachusetts. The ten round heavyweight encounter between DaVarryl Williamson (22-4-0, 18 KO’s) and Mike Mollo (15-0-0, 9 KO’s) promises to be an

exciting fight in which DaVarryl Williamson, who has lost to Byrd, Wlamidir Klistchko and Joe Mesi, will be going against an unbeaten Mike Mollo, who has nine knockouts to his record compared to the eighteen of Williamson. Mollo is ranked 15th by WBO and 26th by the WBC and he has loudly proclaimed that 2006 is his year. Mollo is the current holder of the Latino belts of the WBC, WBO and IBF. Williamson is returning to the ring for the first time since his failure to capture Chris Byrd’s IBF title, which is now in the hand of Wladimir Klistchko, in October last year. However, the heavyweight bout will not be televised.

In a bout for the IBF Super Flyweight title, Luis Alberto Perez (23-1-0, 15 KO’s) will be defending his title against Dimitri Kirilov (28-2-0, 9 KO’s). Perez has defended his title twice after capturing it from Felix Machado while Kirilov earned the title shot after beating Reynaldo Lopez by majority decision. Perez, who is ranked number four in the world, is expected to beat Kirilov.

In a cruiserweight showdown, Steve Cunningham (19-0-0, 10 KO’s) will be taking on Guillermo Jones (33-3-2, 26 KO’s) for the vacant IBF Cruiserweight title. Cunningham beat Jones by split decision in April 2005 and the Philadelphia fighter, who knocked out Lloyd Bryan in the fifth round in his most recent fight, will be favourite to beat Jones again.

In other scheduled action, thirty two year old Victor Burgos (38-14-3, 23 KO’s) will take on Adonis Rivas (21-9-2, 10 KO’s). Burgos has come off a tenth round knockout win over Javier Maravilla Murillo in September 2005 which came after Burgos failed to take away Will Grigsby’s IBF Flyweight title. If Burgos were to beat Rivas, he would face Ulises Solis next as the Mexican recently beat Grigsby.

The main event sees twenty six year old Alejandro Garcia (25-1-0, 24 KO’s) defend his WBA Light Middleweight title against thirty three year old Jose Antonio Rivera (37-4-1, 24 KO’s). Rivera lost his most recent fight against Luis Collazo for the WBA Welterweight title via a split decision. In that fight, Rivera’s strength of being able to put relentless pressure on his opponent was apparent and he also displayed his huge heart. Rivera proved he was worthy for major television exposure and he will be able to showcase his talents on Showtime as well as in his adopted hometown.

Garcia is a knockout artist from Tijunana, Mexico. His one loss came against Travis Simms after the referee broke the two fighters up, after which Garcia dropped his hands, leaving Simms to capitalise. Garcia’s last appearance on August 13th 2005 saw the Mexican win a unanimous twelve round decision against Luca Messi and he was then declared the outright WBA Light Middleweight champion after a rematch fight with Simms fail to materialise. The fight definitely has the prospects of being a exciting showdown and it promises to be an action-packed contest due to the knockout ability of Garcia coupled with the attacking style of Rivera.