HEAVY HANDS: TUESDAY NIGHT FIGHTS PREVIEW

By Damien Picariello

Continuing the masochistic trend that's emerged in televised boxing over the past several years, this coming Tuesday night, May 24th of 2005, features two pugilistic programs in directly competing time slots.  This time, it's not HBO and Showtime vying for an already limited viewership, but ESPN2 and NBC.  At 8 pm ET, both ESPN2's Tuesday Night Fights and the live series finale of NBC's The Contender will air, leaving fight fans with yet another evening of remote-bruising indecisiveness.  I haven't been watching The Contender, so I'm only going to preview this Tuesday's ESPN2 card.  However, I will pick the winners for The Contender's finale.

ESPN2 offers viewers a pair of interesting match-ups this coming Tuesday, headlined by the light middleweight scrap between Teddy Reid and "Smooth" Rodney Jones.

Reid brings a record of 23 victories, 6 defeats and 1 draw, and 17 of the 23 notches in his belt have finished out inside the scheduled distance.  He made his last appearance this past January, stopping the difficult Eddie Sanchez in a painfully sloppy seven rounds, and before that sustained an 8th round TKO loss at the hands of welterweight banger Kermit Cintron.  Reid has spent the majority of his career at the welterweight limit of 147 pounds, in contrast to Jones, a lifelong junior middle who also owns 2 inches in height on Reid.  Reid's style, career, strengths and weaknesses can basically be summed up by watching his all-action war with Elio Ortiz back in 2003:  He's powerful, explosive, more than a little chinny and doesn't waste time with technical displays.  This can work to his advantage against more modest competition, and he's certainly able to catch any fighter cold or sleeping, but he's fallen short in his biggest fights largely because he is easily hurt and not impossible to outbox.

The southpaw Jones, two years Reid's senior at 36, is 35-3 with 22 via KO.  Jones will be looking to finesse a victory over Reid with superior boxing skills and reasonably tight defense (compared to Reid, at least).  After sustaining two back-to-back losses in 1993, Jones claimed the biggest win of his career in 1996 with a 10 round unanimous decision over current WBO welterweight champ Antonio Margarito.  Jones then went undefeated until 2000, when he lost a WBO light middleweight title shot to Harry Simon via majority decision.  Since the loss to Simon, Jones has won 11 straight fights against largely mediocre competition, and looks to make a strong statement with a "Smooth" performance against Reid on national television.

The evening's ESPN2 co-feature brings us a fascinating 122-pound contest, as talented prospect Art Simonyan faces off against the dirtiest player in the game, Agapito "El Ciclon" Sanchez. 

A fellow scribe once remarked to me, "If Sanchez could bring a box cutter into the ring, he would."  The 35-year-old Sanchez may have a well-deserved reputation as a foul factory, but don't let that blind you to his top-notch skills.  At 34-11-3 with 17 wins by knockout, Sanchez has stood across the ring from some of the best little men in the sport, and has emerged victorious more than a few times.  Most notable of Sanchez's wins are decisions over former lightweight champion Javier Jauregui and current 122-pound king Oscar Larios.  In 2001, Sanchez came out butting, rabbit-punching and banging below the belt against Manny Pacquiao, in a bout that ultimately went to the scorecards after being stopped in the 6th due to a cut sustained by the Pac-Man.  Sanchez was awarded a technical draw in that encounter, and in a puzzling move proceeded to take the next three years off.  He made his comeback in 2004, but was blasted out in seven one-sided rounds by current WBO 122-pound champion and fellow Dominican Joan Guzman.  Sanchez has gone 3-1 since the loss to Guzman, and looks to take full advantage of his adversary's relative inexperience come Tuesday evening.

Art Simonyan is 14-1 with 7 early nights, and is coming off of a stoppage defeat at the hands of IBF super bantamweight champ Israel Vasquez.  Although his recent competition has been better than many prospects, the 29-year-old Simonyan will need plenty of guidance from trainer John Bray in order to deal with the southpaw "trickeration" and questionable tactics of Sanchez.  Simonyan is a well-schooled boxer, and at 5'7 will hold a three inch height advantage over Sanchez, making it likely that Simonyan will try to use his jab and keep Sanchez on the outer end of his punching range.

After going 0-2 on last Friday's Telefutura card, my picks record is now 6-2 with 2 knockouts.

FIGHTS: Teddy Reid vs. Rodney Jones, Art Simonyan vs. Agapito Sanchez

DATE: May 24, 2005

TV: ESPN2

MY PICKS: Jones UD, Simonyan UD

FIGHTS: Peter Manfredo, Jr. vs. Sergio Mora, Alfonso Gomez vs. Jesse Brinkley

DATE: May 24, 2005

TV: NBC

MY PICKS: Mora UD, Gomez UD

Send comments or questions to Damien Picariello at: Damien@kofantasyboxing.com