By William Mackay: In what may be the best fights on the entire card tonight in Las Vegas, slugger Breidis Prescott (24-3, 19 KOs) faces the hard hitting Mike Alvarado (31-0, 22 KO’s) in a 10 round bout for Alvarado’s IBF Latino light welterweight title on the undercard of the Manny Pacquiao vs. Juan Manuel Marquez fight at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Also on the undercard will be a fight between 40-year-old Joel Casamayor (38-5-1, 22 KOs) facing WBO light welterweight champion Timothy Bradley (27-0, 11 KO’s) in a 12 round fight that’s meant to be a showcase fight for Bradley to attract interest in a possible Top Rank in house fight between Bradley, who recently signed with Top Rank, and Pacquiao.

The more interesting fight will be the Alvarado-Prescott fight, as this one will have very little clinching, head butts or other types of fouls and will be a bout of pure slugging from start to finish. Prescott was recently beaten by a controversial 12 round decision when he made the mistake of agreeing to fight Paul McCloskey in his home country of Belfast, Northern Ireland. Although Prescott appeared to win the fight by a comfortable 9 rounds to 3 margin in the minds of many boxing fans, it was McCloskey who was given the decision by a 12 round unanimous decision.

Hopefully, Prescott has learned a lesson from that fight about taking fights in other fighter’s home countries.
Prescott won’t have to go looking for Alvarado tonight the way he did in chasing McCloskey around the ring for 12 rounds. Alvarado will come straight at him and will make Prescott’s job that much easier. The question here is whether Prescott has the stamina to fight hard for 12 rounds. Against McCloskey, Prescott seemed to wear out in the last two rounds of the fight. He still dominated the weak punching McCloskey with his jab and right hand, but he clearly looked tired at the end of the fight.