Tonight at 9:45 pm EDT on HBO Boxing After Dark, Yuriorkis Gamboa looks to stop the insanity befalling his fellow Cubans in recent weeks, as he takes on Mexico's Jorge Solis in the featherweight main event.
The arguably more interesting fight of the night is the co-feature, as featherweight late stage prospects Mikey Garcia and Matt Remillard do battle in a 10-round bout.
You can check out our full preview from earlier this week, but here are a couple of snips.
Gamboa-Solis:
I get why people love Gamboa. At times, he's a destructive force in the ring. He has unbelievable natural athleticism and ability, and he combines that with a strong boxing IQ. It's rare you get both. He has also adapted beautifully to the pro game, which some of his Cuban counterparts fail to do after they've had the amateur system drilled into their brains for so long. ... Solis is a good fighter. So was Salido, so was Barros. I hope a different fate awaits Solis, though. I hope we see the Yuriorkis Gamboa that got everyone excited in the first place, and not the guy just there to get his W and await the next fight. And I hope Max Kellerman brings two pair of pants.
Garcia-Remillard:
[Garcia's] TV breakout came on the undercard of the Soto-Antillon barnburner in December, when he shredded tricky and frustrating Canadian Olivier Lontchi, knocking him out in the fifth round. The Lontchi fight showed Garcia at a to-date career best. He was just locked in offensively, took what Lontchi gave him, and made the most of it repeatedly. It was a really impressive performance for a young fighter against a savvy and in many ways downright annoying opponent. Lontchi is no great shakes, but his skill set is built to bother prospects, and Garcia just took him apart, doing far better than Juan Manuel Lopez did in 2009 against Lontchi. ... [Remillard] has not faced the same level of competition that Garcia has, though. Nicknamed "Sharp Shooter," the best win on his sheet might be veteran Mauricio Pastrana, which was a six-round decision win back in 2008, long after Pastrana was a contender. I don't mean this to offend any of our readers in the northeastern United States, but I think it's fair to say that the prospects out of that region in recent years often don't hold up to scrutiny once the time has come to find out what's what and stop feeding on the chum. Is Remillard another overhyped-via-moderate hype New Englander, or is he the real deal?
Join us tonight for coverage and talkin' about boxing. We might even learn something, too.