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This Saturday, Boxing After Dark features a premier trio of prospects in their HBO debuts in a tripleheader of 10-round bouts.
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The fights will be shown live from Terrible's Primm Valley Casino Resorts in Primm, Nev., beginning at 9:45 ET/PT, delayed on the West Coast.
It's quite a card, actually. 2004 Cuban Olympic gold medalist Yuriokis Gamboa, 9-0 (8), faces Darling Jimenez, 23-2-2 (14), in a super featherweight bout. Mexican junior middleweight Alfredo Angulo, 12-0 (9), is pitted against Richard Gutierrez, 24-1 (14). And in the opener, James "Mandingo" Kirkland, 21-0 (18), from Austin, Texas, is coming off four wins and three knockouts in 2007 to fight Eromosele Albert, 21-1 (10), in another matchup of 154-pounders.
Gamboa, Angulo and Kirkland are being matched tough on this card. No one can accuse promoter Gary Shaw or HBO of lining up cupcakes for them.
Jimenez has beaten some good fighters, including a KO of Mike Anchondo in his last outing, knocking him out cold. Gutierrez's lone loss was by majority decision to Joshua Clottey in 2006. And Albert, who has a three-inch height advantage over Kirkland, has fought stiff competition, last year stopping Daniel Edouard and winning a unanimous decision over veteran "Yori Boy" Campas.
Oddly, Albert's only loss was in 2005 to Julio Jean who is ... well, not very good.
So there will be no free lunch for the boxing neophytes Saturday night. The combined record of the six participants is an eye popping 110-4-2 (81).
James Kirkland has already made somewhat of a name for himself with his exciting appearances on Showtime's ShoBox series. As his record indicates, Kirkland is a big puncher, and he normally takes his opponents out early.
He also knows how to deal with adversity. In his last fight against Allen Conyers in November, he was floored early in Round 1, jumped up quickly, ate another flush shot, then snapped back to form to stalk Conyers, stopping him at 2:56 of Round 1.
"He (Conyers) did James a favor because he woke him up," Kirkland trainer Ann Wolfe said this week. "The previous fight had ended early, and we had five minutes to get to the ring, and I didn't have time to get the edge off.
"But you see about Kirkland what happens when he gets up. In my opinion it wasn't the knockdown that hurt James, it was the shot that landed when he got up. Allen had gotten confident, so I knew he was going to go because James was going to open up."
Kirkland, now 24, has been fighting all his life, fighting a life of poverty, the lure of the streets and desperation. He never knew his father. Boxing is his means to improve his life and his family's.
And Kirkland is fully aware of the painful alternatives. The wrong crowd and a hand-to-mouth existence led to James receiving six months in jail and six months house arrest for an armed robbery in 2003. He had found a father figure in Don "Pops" Billingsley at 15, and Billingsley resumed James' training upon his release, along with Ann Wolfe, one of the best female fighters in the game.
