by Ronnie Nathanielsz

Undefeated Filipino southpaw Mercito “No Mercy” Gesta plans to come out aggressively when he faces tough Ty Barnett of Washington D.C. on ESPN Friday Night Fights at the Texas Station Casino in Las Vegas on August 3.

Gesta’s trainer and co-manager Vince Parra told BoxingScene.com/Manila Standard that “this is a big exposure fight for Mercito and we are going to take advantage of it and he’s coming out guns blazing.”

Parra told us Gesta “is looking very sharp and he’s been sparring with real, good junior middleweight prospect David Baragon and another really good welterweight prospect in San Diego James Taylor.”

He said the sparring partners were “real tough big guys with good style. Gesta did his last 12 rounds of sparring on Wednesday and today “we are winding it down back to 6 rounds and we are just going into the next week doing 6-8 rounds of sparring for the rest of the camp before we leave for Vegas on the eve of the weigh-in on August 1.”

Parra said Mercito’s father, a Muay Thai standout was a tremendous help in training Gesta and “we are winding down and the hard work is done.”

Parra welcomed the tough talk of Gesta’s opponent Ty Barnett telling us “that’s good. We are looking for an action fight. Mercito likes to have somebody in front of him who doesn’t respect him. We’ll do our talking in the ring.”

Barnett was quoted by Dennis Guillermo of examiner.com as saying  "I'm looking forward to going out and upsetting this guy in sensational fashion. I'm going to introduce the world to Ty Barnett. They must see me. I'm the best kept secret."

Gesta is coming off an 8th round TKO of Oscar Cuervo on April 14 while Barnett scored a 7th round TKO over Robert Da Luz on May 12.

The undefeated Gesta has a record of 25-0-1 with 13 knockouts while Barnett is 20-2 with 13 knockouts.