Kirkland in risky fight against Tapia on Saturday

By Boxing News - 12/05/2013 - Comments

kirkland4534By Eric Thomas: Junior middleweight James Kirkland (31-1, 27 KO’s) will be fighting this Saturday night in a very risky fight for him against the unbeaten Glen Tapia (20-0, 12 KO’s) in a 10 round fight on HBO at the Boardwalk Hall in Atlantic City, New Jersey.

Kirkland hasn’t fought in a year a half and he’s taking a big risk in getting back in the ring without a tune-up to fight someone as good as the 23-year-old Tapia. A loss for Kirkland in this fight will be a huge blow to his career because he’s hoping to get himself ranked high in the 154 lb. division to get a world title shot. Getting beaten by Tapia would temporarily derail those plans.

There are better junior middleweights than Tapia, but he’s still a very good fighter and capable of beating a rusty fighter coming off of a long layoff like Kirkland. Tapia has wins over Elco Garcia, Ayi Bruce, Dashon Johnson and Abraham Han. His lack of experience is definitely something that Tapia has going against him in this fight because even a rusty Kirkland could be too much of a step up for Tapia in this fight.

Kirkland was out of action for most of 2009 until March of 2011 due to legal problems. When he did come back back in 2011, Kirkland made the mistake of coming into a fight against Nobuhiro Ishida in less than his best shape and was stopped in the 1st round in a fight where he was knocked down three times before referee Joe Cortez halted the bout. Kirkland came back in good shape and won his next four fights.

Among his four wins, Kirkland halted Alfredo Angulo by a 6th round stoppage after getting dropped in the 1st round by him. In Kirkland’s last fight a year ago against Carlos Molina, he was dominated for 10 rounds, but was given a 10th round disqualification win when Molina’s corner stepped inside of the ring after the end of the round following a knockdown of Molina. It was kind of a petty disqualification because the referee could have given Molina’s corner a warning instead of disqualifying him. Kirkland looked slow and over-muscular for that fight. He wasn’t the same fighter that had stopped Angulo four months earlier.



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