Salgado vs Barros, Prescott vs Figueroa, George vs Miranda, More: Boxing TV Schedule For Aug. 17-18

Friday, August 17

ESPN2 / ESPN3.com, 10:00 p.m. EDT, Don George vs Dionisio Miranda, Carlos Molina vs Damian Frias. Your Friday Night Fights season finale, and due to an injury to Adonis Stevenson, probably not exactly what you were hoping for, as we have fringe contender George against gatekeeper Miranda in the main event, and contender Molina against flameout Frias in the co-feature. It's not really so much that it's awful or anything as it is the fact that we had what figured to be a really fun main event, at least if George had been in "bomb" mode. Bad Left Hook will have live round-by-round coverage.

CadenaTres (Mexico), 10:00 p.m. EDT, Jose Emilio Perea vs Jose Lopez. Just to be clear, this isn't "Carita" Lopez, it's "Piston" Lopez.

Saturday, August 18

GFL ($9.99), 5:00 p.m. EDT, Joel Diaz vs Guillermo Sanchez, Glen Tapia vs Hilario Lopez. Young Joel Diaz is back. You are most likely, I would assume, to recall his work from January, when he and Guy Robb had a war on ShoBox. Both Diaz and Tapia are solid prospects.

Televisa (Mexico), 10:00 p.m. EDT, Juan Carlos Salgado vs Jonathan Victor Barros, Alejandro Sanabria vs Seiichi Okada, Ricardo Alvarez vs Rene Gonzalez. Salgado vs Barros is, really, the biggest fight of the weekend, a 130-pound title fight where Salgado should be favored, but Barros not counted out. The other two fights are solid undercard fare.

Azteca (Mexico), 10:30 p.m. EDT, Jackie Nava vs Lisa Brown.

Telefutura, 11:00 p.m. EDT, Breidis Prescott vs Francisco Figueroa, Rances Barthelemy vs Alejandro Rodriguez. Prescott (25-4, 20 KO) is never really going to be a contender. I mean, let's be honest about that. He's had plenty of chances and his claim to fame is always going to be knocking out Amir Khan in 54 seconds. He's never going to beat top fighters again unless it's something fluky. He's come close -- Paul McCloskey was at least a fringe top 10 guy when Prescott got unlucky on the cards against him, and Breidis was beating Mike Alvarado but couldn't bring it home. He's not a bad fighter. He just has a wall. The good thing for him is that he doesn't realize this (or care), and he just keeps plugging along, waiting his turn, which he's sure will come. I admire that, really. Figueroa (20-4-1, 13 KO) has a couple of notable moments, too: The time that Randall Bailey absolutely flattened him with a right hand on Friday Night Fights, and when he was kicked out of Miguel Cotto's Pacquiao training camp in 2009, and then claimed it was because Cotto couldn't handle his "Gato moves," and that he had been "doing (his) thang thang." To be fair to Figueroa, that training camp for Cotto was such a debacle that he might well have been 100% telling the honest truth, and his response, when you get around his "thang thang" and "Gato moves," had a lot of truth in it, especially in hindsight. You might also recall that following his booting from the Cotto camp, Figueroa and Pacquiao sparring partner Rashad Holloway had a miserable six-round draw on ESPN2. Figueroa has not won a fight since 2008, but he's also only fought once since 2009, a loss in March of this year. He took time away from the sport, and if he'd felt like it, there were plenty of wins he could have racked up in the meantime. He's tricky when he's at his best.