Tonight's edition of Friday Night Fights on ESPN2 and ESPN3.com is live from the Pharr, Texas, Convention Center, with a main event between a pair of fringe contenders and a co-feature highlighting a comeback of sorts.
In the 10-round main event, junior middleweights Antwone Smith and Roberto Garcia do battle. Smith (21-3-1, 12 KO) is a B-show regular whose upside seems tapped at this stage following a nice run of mild upsets in 2009. Since then, he's gone 3-2, losing his tougher fights against Lanardo Tyner (KO-9) and Kermit Cintron (UD-10), the latter a dull, uninspired effort fully responsible for allowing Golden Boy Promotions to force-feed us Canelo vs Cintron last November.
Garcia (30-3, 21 KO) is best-known as the guy that Antonio Margarito fought in Mexico when Margarito had no U.S. license to box. He was completely blown out by a rusty, out-of-shape Margarito, but that Margarito did at least still have two good eyes, I guess.
This is one of those FNF main events where you basically have to pray it's a good fight, because otherwise there's not much to it. Neither is in a prospect stage, neither is making a charge toward contention. It's just a fight, so it has to be good to get bang for your time.
The co-feature is an eight-round junior welterweight "attraction," as first round knockout streak phony Tyrone Brunson (21-1-1, 20 KO) returns to the ring for the first time since his 2009 ass-kicking at the hands of Carson Jones. You probably remember Brunson, a Philadelphia native, from his run of 19 straight first round stoppages, which would have been impressive if literally anybody he beat had any value. A lot of those KOs came in Michigan, one of the lousiest commissions out there, and then you also had Indiana and New Zealand. He fought only once in Pennsylvania, at the Blue Horizon in his pro debut. And then it unraveled on him, and now he's back.
He's facing James De La Rosa (20-1, 12 KO), who lost his last fight to Allen Conyers in January 2011.