By Matt Stein: Unbeaten junior middleweight James Kirkland (25-0, 22 KO’s) will be fighting on the undercard of the WBA light welterweight clash between champion Amir Khan vs. Marcos Maidana bout on December 11th in Las Vegas, Nevada, as long as Kirkland wins his November 6th bout against a still to be determined opponent. Kirkland, 26, has been in prison in Texas for the past year for a weapons violation. At the time that Kirkland was incarcerated last year, Kirkland was considered by many boxing experts as a future world champion.
Kirkland had easily defeated the hard punching Joel Julio in March of 2009. Kirkland’s first fight back from his prison stint will be at the Pudential Center in Newark, New Jersey.
With Kirkland making a comeback, this is potentially bad news for fighters like Miguel Cotto, Antonio Margarito and Manny Pacquiao. If Kirkland starts in where he left off by knocking out one fighter after another, there’s going to be a great deal of pressure applied to Cotto, Pacquiao and Margarito to fight him. If they choose not to, it’s going to make it seem as if they’re avoiding him.
Kirkland would be big problem for either of those guys because of his Mike Tyson-like power and all out attacking style. Don’t hold your breath waiting for Kirkland to get fights against any of those fighters anytime soon. If Kirkland looks as good as he did before he went to prison, he should be able to slice through the competition at junior middleweight incredibly fast and be banging on the door to fight Cotto in no time.
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