Tonight's edition of ESPN Friday Night Fights starts at 9 p.m. EDT on ESPN2, headlined by a 140-pound do-or-die fight between veterans "Rated R" Kendall Holt and Julio "The Kidd" Diaz.
Holt (26-4, 14 KO) is a former titleholder at 140 pounds who looked outright terrible last year in a bad loss to Kaizer Mabuza, and has boxed only one round since then, a January stoppage of Lenin Arroyo in 1:50. So we're talking two minutes of real ring time since the February 2010 blowout loss to Mabuza.
Diaz (38-6, 27 KO) had a different 2010, saving his career from what looked to be a freefall with an ESPN win over Herman Ngoudjo. He fought last in January, on the same card as Holt vs Arroyo (Silverdome show), beating Pavel Miranda via TKO-8.
To get back into contention in a tough weight class, both of them badly need this fight. The co-feature tonight pits Puerto Rican junior middleweight propsect Jonathan Gonzalez (12-0, 12 KO, and there are way too many PR fighters lately named Jonathan Gonzalez, for the record) against Chicago's Rudy Cisneros (12-2, 11 KO). Cisneros has not fought since December 2009.
Join us tonight for Friday Night Fights (which reportedly has Victor Ortiz in the studio), after which we'll immediately switch over to ShoBox at 11:05 EDT.
After the jump: Your Friday-related video!
There is NO WAY you could have expected anything different this week.