By Manuel Perez: Undefeated light middleweight prospect James De la Rosa (16-0, 11 KOs) had an easy time defeating Troy Wilson (9-7-1, 4 KOs) in a lopsided 8-round unanimous decision on Friday night at the Catholic Youth Center, in Scranton, Pennsylvania. Along the way, De la Rosa, only 20, showed off excellent boxing skills, if not much in the way of power, while winning a totally one-sided bout.
In fairness to De la Rosa, he may have been able to have scored a knockout if Wilson hadn’t been fighting so defensively throughout the fight. The final judges’ scores were 80-72, 80-72 and 80-72, all for De la Rosa. The fight was mostly dull until the final round, when Wilson finally started letting his hands go for the first time in the bout, and hit De la Rosa with a number of big shots. It’s too had that Wilson waited so long, because who knows? If he had started sooner, he may at least have had a small chance at possibly scoring a knockout. As it was, he seemed to be content with just trying to do enough to survive the bout without getting hit with anything.
De la Rosa used his jab and a fair amount of combinations in the early rounds of the fight, keeping Wilson, 32, at bay. It didn’t take much to keep Wilson on the outside, though, because he seemed not too particularly interested in making a fight of it. For his part, De la Rosa didn’t have much room to speak, either, for he was throwing only 20 or so punches per round, a dreadful number for a fighter of his youth.
One would expect him to be able to at least able to throw 40-60 punches per round without any problem, rather than half of that. De la Rosa, even when he was fighting full throttle, seemed mostly to be a hunt and peck type puncher. When he would land, there was almost nothing on his shots whatsoever, and even his hardest punches seemed more like a good jab than a tue power shot.
As the rounds went by, it became clear that Wilson had no intention of letting his hands go with any kind of regularity, as he seemed more intent with lasting the fight without getting stretched. In most of the rounds, he was only averaging a little over 10 punches attempted per round. This gave De la Rosa pretty much free reign to throw anything he wanted without worry of getting hit with any kind of counter shots.
In most cases, this would lead to a knockout but De la Rosa just didn’t have the pop to get the job done, hence he had to work much harder than he would have otherwise. The fight never even hinted at any real action until the 8th, at which time Wilson caught De la Rosa with a number of good shots in the round.
I suppose I should be more impressed with De la Rosa, who did everything he could to win the fight, throwing good combinations, fighting effectively from the outside and rarely getting hit in the process. However, his lack of power seemed to bother me, especially when Wilson turned on the gas in the 8th round. In that small amount of time, it was Wilson who looked like the better prospect of the two and not the much hyped De la Rosa. Though at 20, De la Rosa still has time to develop his power but usually you can tell by this age whether or not a fighter is going to have any type of power in the future.
With De la Rosa, I see no power, which will be a big problem given the division that he fights in. Because of this, I don’t like his chances at being a factor in the light middleweight division. He would be better off trying to lose some baby fat and perhaps moving down a couple of weight classes to the light welterweight division where his lack of power wouldn’t be such a hindrance.
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