Edwin Rodriguez vs. Azea Augustama on Golovkin-Rubio card on October 18th

By Boxing News - 09/20/2014 - Comments

rodriguez432By Dan Ambrose: Former world title challenger Edwin Rodriguez (24-1, 16 KOs) will be back in the ring next month against light heavyweight Azea Augustama (17-1, 9 KOs) on October 18th on the undercard of the Marco Antonio Rubio vs. Gennady Golovkin fight card at the StubHub Center in Carson, California.

Rodriguez, 29, hasn’t fought since last November when he was soundly beaten by WBA super middleweight champion Andre Ward in a one-sided 12 round unanimous decision. Rodriguez tried as hard as he could against Ward, but he just didn’t have the talent to compete in that fight.

Instead of getting back in the ring as soon as possible to resume his career after that loss, Rodriguez sat out of the ring for 10 months. By the time he sets foot inside the ring on October 18th, Rodriguez will have been out of action 11 months. He just lost a year of his career by staying inactive like that.

In hindsight, it wasn’t the smartest move that Rodriguez could have made. Rodriguez is now fighting at light heavyweight and there are a lot of questions as to whether he has the talent to compete with the best in the division like Bernard Hopkins, Adonis Stevenson, Sergey Kovalev and Jurgen Brahmer. Based on how Rodriguez fought against Ward, you would have to assume that he’s not in their class in the talent department.

Rodriguez made $1 million for the Ward fight. That was a good payday that he got from that fight, and it probably helped him stay idle all this time.

Rodriguez’s fight against the little known Augustama won’t be shown on the televised portion of the Golovkin vs. Rubio fight on HBO Championship Boxing, which isn’t all that surprising considering that Rodriguez has been out of the ring for so long, and is coming off of a one-sided loss in his last fight. Facing an unknown like Augustama obviously doesn’t help things for Rodriguez because he’s not a recognizable name that casual or even hardcore boxing fans are familiar with.

“This is his contract comeback fight. HBO wanted to put it on HBO Latino and we were OK with that,” Rodriguez’s promoter Lou DiBella told Dan Rafael of ESPN.com. “Edwin is fighting at 175 now and we didn’t want to fight a stooge. We wanted a solid guy to see where he is and to assess it pretty quickly. Augustama is a guy we can do that with. I don’t think this is a walk-in-the-park kind of fight.”

Rodriguez needs to stay busy and he should be back on HBO as long as he keeps winning and looks good. He’s got the potential to win a world title at light heavyweight if matched against the right opponent.



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