By Dan Ambrose: Undefeated lightweight contender Felix Verdejo (20-0, 14 KOs) will be returning to the ring on April 16 to face Daniel Evangelista (18-6-2, 14 KOs) in a Solo Boxero Tecate card at the Coliseo Roberto Clemente, in San Juan, Puerto Rico.
Evangelista Jr, 25, has lost three out of his last five fights. However, he’s not supposed to be a competitive opponent. The 22-year-old Verdejo can’ afford to suffer an injury against Evangelista Jr., because Top Rank promoter Bob Arum expects to bring him back on June 11 against Jose Felix Jr. (33-1-1, 25 Kos) at Madison Square Garden in New York.
That will be Verdejo’s first real test of his career. That fight will be televised on HBO.
Verdejo, 2 WBA, #3 WBO, #4 IBF, #11 WBC, is coming off of a 10 round unanimous decision last February against William Silva at Madison Square Garden in New York. Verdejo took some criticism in that fight for failing to score a knockout against Silva, and having to struggle a little bit to win the fight.
Arum is going to be stepping Verdejo up again if he’s able to get past Felix Jr. in June. We could see Verdejo fight for a world title by 2017. At 22, Verdejo appears to be heading for superstardom, and he could wind up soon as Top Rank’s #1 star. He’s almost certainly going to move up to the welterweight division in the future. At 5’9”, Verdejo has the size, hand speed and punching power to win titles t 140 and 147.
Tim Bradley focusing on being more cerebral for Pacquiao third fight
Tim Bradley (33-1-1, 13 KOs) says he’s going to be looking to use a brainier approach to his third fight against Manny Pacquiao (57-6-2, 38 KOs) on April 9 at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nevada. Up until recently, Bradley always came in and slugged with his opposition in trying to beat them down rather than to out-think them and out-box them. By choosing to slug with fighters that had more size and power than himself, Bradley frequently made his fights tougher than they should have otherwise been.
“Now we’re becoming more cerebral, now we’re becoming more of a thinking fighter than just going in there and fighting,” Bradley said to the nydailynews.com. “I used to come in here and spar and I used to just fight, ‘Oh, I got to beat the sparring partners down today.’ Where’s the strategy at? Where’s the professionalism at?”
Bradley is now trained by Teddy Atlas, a trainer known for using his brains to have his fighters fight in an intelligent manner. Atlas wants to keep Bradley from standing and slugging with Pacquiao on April 9, because that’s the mistake that he made in his second fight against Pacquiao.
Bradley was much more mobile in his first fight against Pacquiao in 2012. That was a fight in which Bradley used constant in and out movement to outbox Pacquiao. In the second fight in 2014, Bradley was forced to be stationary after suffering a leg injury early in the fight.
“Fighters try to improve and change,” Pacquiao’s trainer Freddie Roach said to the latimes.com, “but when they get hit, they revert to what they normally do best.”
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