De La Rosa Defeats Coleman – Latest Boxing News

By Boxing News - 10/04/2008 - Comments

coleman4233.jpgBy David Lar: Undefeated welterweight prospect James De La Rosa (18-0, 12 KOs) won a hard-fought 10-round unanimous decision over Tim Coleman (14-1-1, 3 KOs) on Friday night at the Wicomico Civic Center, in Salisbury, Maryland. Although De la Rosa, 20, an outstanding amateur with over 100 amateur bouts, got the final judges’ decision by the scores of 96-94, 96-94 and 96-94, I personally had the fight a draw. In fact, I thought Coleman, 24, looked to be the better prospect and the one with the better overall potential than the 20 year-old De la Rosa, who was the one that was much more hyped coming into Friday night’s fight.

Coleman, reminding me of a smaller, younger, faster version of Steve Forbes with a lot of good skills, dominated the first three rounds of the bout. He tagged De La Rosa often with hard right hands, lefts to the body and thudding jabs to the head. He was much faster than De La Rosa, and much the better in terms of defense. De La Rosa, the taller fighter at 5’10” compared to the 5’7” Coleman, made it easy for Coleman by standing in close and trying to beat him at what he does best which is fighting on the inside.

Things went well for Coleman as long as De La Rosa was standing without punching range, because it enabled Coleman to throw his faster shots and get good extension on his shorter punches. When De la Rosa would attempt to get to the outside so that he could land his shots, Coleman would quickly follow after him and stay in close proximity. In the 4th round, however, De La Rosa finally started getting enough space to throw his own shots, and began to land well with hard body shots. Coleman looked rattled by De La Rosa’s body shots, and backed up to the ropes and took a lot of punishment in the round trying to cover up.

Rather than trying to move away from De La Rosa, Coleman took a lot of hard shots in the round and did little in the way of throwing punches of his own. De La Rosa continued to fight well in the 6th round, chasing after Coleman and hitting him with excellent body shots while he attempted to cover up on the ropes. At this point in the fight, Coleman looked like a completely different fighter than he did earlier in the first three rounds. He wasn’t punching and was allowing De La Rosa to throw shots without worry of having to defend against Coleman’s shots.

In the 7th round, Coleman came storming back, hitting De La Rosa with large number of big right hands to the head. Each time that De La Rosa would move into to start winding up on his big body shots, Coleman would nail him with straight hands before he could get his shots off. It seemed like only a matter of time before Coleman would began to do this, because De La Rosa basically left himself wide open each time he would attempt to throw a body punch, as if he were so focused on throwing the shot that he was unaware of anything else going on.

Coleman continued fighting well in the 8th, hitting De La Rosa with a ton of big right hand shots and keeping him on the defensive. However, from the 9th until the 12th, De La Rosa using his body attacked controlled the action for the remainder of the fight. He continued to get hit hard by right hands every once in a while from Coleman, but this didn’t deter him from landing his hard body shots. In the end, I had both fighters winning five rounds each and neither doing enough to distinguish themselves as the better fighter.

I still thought that Coleman had the better potential, although not at welterweight, because he seems a little too small for this weight class. De La Rosa looks like a good B-class fighter, but no more than that. He doesn’t appear to have the skills, power or coordination to be a top 15 fighter from what I saw of him, and he’d likely get destroyed if he ever attempted to fight one of the champions. He might, however, some day rise to the level of a gatekeeper, but I can’t see him going much further than that I’m afraid.