By Jim Dower: Unbeaten former junior middleweight contender James Kirkland (25-0, 22 KO’s) will be fighting this Saturday night against 32-year-old Ahsanti Gibbs (10-2, 4 KO’s) in a scheduled eight round bout on the undercard of the Saul Alvarez vs. Matthew Hatton bout at the Honda Center, in Anaheim, California. Although the fight is technically scheduled for eight rounds, look for it to last two or three rounds at the most unless Kirkland decides to carry Gibbs for the full eight.
Gibbs has lost his last two fights going into this bout and that’s not a good sign given that he’s facing a high pressure knockout artist. Gibbs is a super middleweight, which tells you that Kirkland may be still slowly taking off weight to get back down to his old weight class of 154. Kirkland has been in prison since shortly after defeating Joel Julio in March 2009 due to a weapons violation.
Now out, Kirkland will be fighting frequently to get back in the swing of things. He has a fight scheduled next month on April 9th on the undercard of the Marcos Maidana vs. Erik Morales fight at the MGM Grand, in Las Vegas. There’s still no opponent for that date, but it will likely be someone similar to Gibbs. In other words, a guy that won’t be giving Kirkland much of a test.
Before going to prison, Kirkland was storming through the junior middleweight division, beating guys like Bryan Vera, Julio and Erosmosele Albert and looking to be on the verge of a title shot. It’s still unknown how good Kirkland was/is because he never fought anyone that was truly dangerous. But given the lower quality fighters in the junior middleweight division, he would have likely picked up a title or two by this time had he kept fighting. It’s hard to see the current champions Miguel Cotto, Sergiy Dzinziruk or Cornelius Bundradge beating Kirkland back then.
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