DAVID RODELA vs ELOY PEREZ

Up-and-and coming boxers meet in a cracking good fight on Friday’s Campillo-Shumenov supporting card when David Rodela challenges Eloy Perez for the WBC’s United States 130-pound title.

Rodela is the house fighter on the Golden Boy Promotions show, but the Perez camp is hoping to establish a working relationship with GBP.

Perez is unbeaten while Rodela has lost only once — a surprising KO loss more than four years ago. Rodela, a 27-year-old from Oxnard, CA, is the higher-profile fighter, thanks to several televised bouts. The Perez camp, however, feels that the time is right for the 23-year-old from Washington State but who now lives and trains in Salinas, CA.

“When we first saw Eloy we said he needed a lot of work and it was going to take about three years for him to relearn what he’s been doing,” Perez’s manager, Kathy Garcia, said over the phone from Salinas this week. (Her husband, Max, is the trainer.) “It’s been three years so basically everything is starting falling into place for him. He’s very disciplined and very hard working in the gym.”

Perez has stopped only four opponents in 15 fights and at about 5ft 6ins he will be giving away height and reach to the rangy Rodela, who stands 5ft 11ins and on paper seems to be the harder hitter. However, Kathy Garcia describes Perez as “a boxer who can mix things up — he’s not one dimensional. He’s very quick, and he’s got very good hand speed. We always train to go the distance. If you’ve got a lot of experience in rounds then you know how to fight to win rounds and at the upper level you’ve got something better going for you than someone who’s used to knocking out their opponents.”

Rodela is, for me, the favourite, due to his physical advantages (he’s boxed in the junior welter division and is huge for a 130-pounder), higher profile and amateur background — he was U.S. national lightweight champion in 2004. Also, he has fought the higher class of opponent, including a win over ex-champ Kevin Kelley.

Several of Rodela’s fights have been extremely close, though. Indeed, five of his last eight wins were on split or majority decisions. He has good boxing ability and he hits hurtfully with the left hook, especially to the body, but he doesn’t always seem to handle pressure too well and he can be quite hittable — I thought that Juan Garcia was able to catch him too easily with right hands in their spirited six-rounder last June.

I haven’t seen Perez, but he does seem to be an improving fighter and his last two wins were over boxers with a combined record of 23-2-1. He was down twice in his bout with Dannie Williams, the 2004 National Golden Gloves champion from St. Louis, but he rallied to win a unanimous decision, and Williams can bang (11 KOs in his 12 wins). This fight showed that Perez can come back from a crisis.

“Eloy knows how to fight taller guys,” Kathy Garcia said. “He’s going to be faster, quicker, slicker, than his opponent.”

Without having seen Perez I’m a bit hesitant to pull the trigger on what I would consider an upset, but the more I think about it, the more I get the sense that Perez can pull it off. OK, enough vacillating — I’ll take Perez to outwork the bigger man for a very close, possibly split, decision win.