This headlines a Fox Sports 1 card on Tuesday night. Austin Trout is pretty much continuing his march at the same level fought since his consecutive losses to Canelo & Lara. Joey Hernandez is taking a step up in class, unless you consider the current version of Trout already inferior to young J-Rock Williams. Hernandez is heavy-handed enough to possibly drop Trout, but can be flattened by a single well-placed counter himself, as happened in the Ed Paredes rematch. Trout has advantages in hand and foot speed, both categories in which Hernandez is more or less average, though he does use lots of lateral movement and throws lots of flurries to create the illusion of being a little faster in both. Trout is 3-1 (0) against fellow southpaws in his career, with decisions over Shawn Garnett over eight and both Rigo Alvarez (Canelo's mediocre brother) and Destroyer Lopez (old and shot) over twelve and the loss being a one-sided humiliation at the hands of Lara. Hernandez is yet to professionally face a fellow southpaw. He operates at roughly a median level between Garnett and Lara, slightly above Rigo Lopez and Destroyer Lopez. He's FNF level, basically - which is what Trout in his comeback also seems to be. Victory for Trout means a 4th consecutive solid B-grade win in his comeback, and probably gets him within spitting distance of contention again. Victory for Hernandez, while an upset, wouldn't be a huge one despite what the bookmakers say, as Trout has looked quite mortal in his comeback and Hernandez was highly enough ranked as recently as last year to fight in an IBF world title eliminator with K9 Bundrage.
Tell Pinoy he's the match picker for Kirk's League and Beastside and I have been pushing hard for him to include this match and he remains silent and won't budge.:bart like a tyrant.
It has a decent co-feature, too. 24 year old unbeaten Mexican southpaw Jorge Lara takes a big leap up in class against dangerous Jesus M. Rojas (whom you might remember as the guy that chased Jorge Arce into retirement after their NC followed by two years of hemming and hawing about having a rematch)
Yeah and he's also leaving off Quillin/Zerafa and Joshua/Cornish (granted both probable mismatches.) he makes some weird choices sometimes. I miss FNF's already.:| He included Rojas/Lara
I'm not sure about it being worth risking actual money, but Hernandez at 9/1 is crazy long all things considered.
He's taking on Pena which could be dangerous for him, he gets hit a lot and Pena can punch, and we can also use this to compare he and Slava's power and see if he can actually KO Pena as opposed to make him quit.:think
With this card followed by the late night talk show host debut of Steven Colbert (with George Clooney and Jeb Bush as his 1st guests) - I'm kinda looking forward to next Tuesday!
Trout seems to be in the midst of some sort of attempted style transformation. He wants to be more entertaining, but what got him noticed was his boxing. He should go back to that.
I'm kind of hoping for him to elect to rumble with Hernandez, because anything could happen. Coin toss who gets knocked down first.
