By Jim Dower: Unbeaten knockout artist light middleweight James Kirkland (23-0, 20 KOs) will be taking on the sternest fight of his young seven-year boxing career when he goes up against former star from The Contender Brian Vera (16-1, 10 KOs) in a 10-round bout on the Ricky Hatton-Paulie Malignaggi undercard on November 22nd at the MGM Grand, in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Kirkland, 24, a fighter with Mike Tyson-like power and aggression, has thus far stormed through the light middleweight division, taking out 20 of his 23 opponents, with 18 of the knockouts occurring in four rounds or less. His chin and defense, though, are less than impressive, making him vulnerable at times even against the marginal opposition that he has fought thus far in his career.
He was knocked down in the first round by Allen Conyers in November, 2007, and although he turned around and took Conyers out, there were several moments in which it looked as if he was going to be knocked out. Kirkland also struggled in defeating Ossie Duran in June 2007.
Kirkland was unable to take Duran out with his power shots, and ended up eating a lot of leather in the process of winning a 10-round unanimous decision. In Kirkland’s’ last fight, a 2nd round TKO over Ricardo Cortes in September, Kirkland dropped Cortes with a big right hand in the second round. While he was down, Kirkland tagged him with a right hand.
After Cortes got up, Kirkland hit him with a series of shots to the head, causing the referee to jump in and halt the fight a little prematurely. However, even if the fight had gone further, Cortes would have stood very little chance at beating Kirkland, because he didn’t have the size or power to compete with the much more stockier and powerful Kirkland.
As for Vera, he shockingly stopped middleweight prospect Andy Lee in a 7th round TKO in March. Vera, 26, got up off the canvas after being knocked down in the 1st round, and fought back well against the harder punching Lee. As the fight progressed into the 6th round, Vera began to take over the fight, hitting the tall slender Lee with hard right hand power shots, hurting him badly.
In the 7th round, Vera staggered Lee with hard right hands and had him ready to drop when the referee Tony Chiarantano jumped in and halted the bout with Lee out on his feet. Though Lee was still fighting back at the end, still throwing hard left hands, his legs were completely gone and it was pretty clear he wasn’t going to be able to withstand Vera’s hard power shots for much longer without going down for the 10-count.
The win was huge for Vera, since few people were giving him any chance whatsoever going into the fight with Lee, who trainer Emanuel Steward was predicting as a future champion in 2008. However, it’s hard to say if that win was indicative of how good Vera really is as a fighter, because he was the bigger fighter than Lee, having fought previously as a super middleweight up until his fight with Lee. Two fights previously, Vera was stopped in the 2nd round by Jaidon Codrington in September 2007