Fredrick Lawson vs. Breidis Prescott

This interesting welterweight showdown headlines a special edition of ESPN2 Thursday Night Fights on March 26th.

Lawson took his first real step up in class and made his American TV debut last October with a unanimous decision over Ray Narh as the co-main event to N'Dam N'Jikam vs. Stevens on an ESPN2 Wednesday Night Fights broadcast. He dropped Narh twice but was unable to finish off the fragile yet cagey old Ghanaian. The jury's still out regarding his power, and his overall ability.

Here were my initial thoughts:

Prescott, meanwhile, is just barely hanging on and on the verge of becoming unalterably irrelevant - still pretty much riding the coattails of his blowout KO1 over Amir Khan at lightweight, seven years ago. His power, unlike that of Lawson, is at least proven to be legitimate against top-shelf international competition and not the product of record-padding at home - albeit more so at 135lb and 140lb than up at welter. At this weight Prescott's mark is 4-1 (2), with all four wins over tomato cans (Davis, Cuello, Garcia & Cassiani) and the loss to Roberto "Amenaza" Garcia - himself very powerful but extremely slow of hand. Garcia is known for his iron chin and Prescott did score a late flash knockdown over him, but couldn't pull victory from the jaws of defeat. Prescott has also been slowly but surely improving his outside boxing skills over the years, now able to utilize his tall frame and jab effectively instead of just bludgeoning his way in. His career has been stalling lately, with a lot of stop-and-go (having bouts against both Jorge Paez Jr. and José Emilio Perea fall through in the last year, making his loss to Garcia his only action since the fall of 2013...) and he desperately needs a W here to resuscitate his chances of contending.

 

Oh yeah, this is tonight.