Glen Tapia To Fight Daniel Dawson 3/7 In Macau
Jan 10, 2015 • 4:33 AM ET
By Keith Idec
A deal has been struck for Glen Tapia to face Daniel Dawson in a 10-round junior middleweight match March 7 in Macau, China.
Australia’s Dawson (40-4-1, 26 KOs) will be Tapia’s toughest opponent since he suffered his only professional defeat, a sixth-round technical knockout against James Kirkland (32-1, 28 KOs) 13 months ago in Atlantic City.
“I know he’s fought a couple champions,” Tapia said. “This is the perfect opponent for me right now. This is the step we need to take to show that I’m here to stay, that I’m not just a B-class fighter. I think 2015 is going to be a big year for me.”
The 25-year-old Tapia (22-1, 14 KOs), of Passaic, N.J., has won two fights by technical knockout and had another canceled since losing to Kirkland. Most recently, he stopped Chicago’s Donatas Bondorovas (18-6-1, 6 KOs) in the fourth round Oct. 4 in Atlantic City. Matchmakers for Bob Arum’s Top Rank Inc., Tapia’s promoter, now want to test him against a better opponent than Bondorovas before trying to arrange an HBO-caliber bout for him later this year.
Dawson is 37, but dropped former WBA 154-pound champion Austin Trout twice in the third round of his last fight. Trout (28-2, 15 KOs) withstood Dawson’s early onslaught and later dropped Dawson on his way to winning a 10-round unanimous decision Aug. 22 in Temecula, Calif. Dawson also has lost to former WBO junior middleweight champ Serhiy Dzinziruk (37-2-1, 24 KOs), who stopped Dawson in the 10th round, and onetime IBF middleweight champ Daniel Geale (31-3, 16 KOs), who defeated Dawson by unanimous decision in a 12-rounder.
The Tapia-Dawson fight for the NABO junior middleweight title will take place at Venetian Macau on the undercard of a 12-round bout between IBF flyweight champ Amnat Ruenroeng (14-0, 5 KOs) and Chinese challenger Zou Shiming (6-0, 1 KO). Freddie Roach trains Shiming and Tapia.
Keith Idec covers boxing for The Record and Herald News, of Woodland Park, N.J., and BoxingScene.com. He can be reached on Twitter @Idecboxing.
