By Ryan Maquiñana
After a brilliant night for the sport where Pawel Wolak and Delvin Rodriguez delivered the fans a wonderful war on ESPN2, followed by an entertaining ShoBox encounter between Diego Magdaleno and Alejandro Perez on Showtime, there was many a spirited sparring session away from the cameras at the Wild Card Boxing Club in Hollywood yesterday.
Sources at the scene report that Adrien Broner and Jorge Linares went four exciting rounds in the gym. Broner is coming off a first-round blowout of Jason Litzau last month. The TKO probably regained the Cincinnati native some fans in the wake of his disappointing performance against Daniel Ponce De Leon.
Meanwhile, Linares, a former two-weight world champion, has racked up four straight wins after the Tokyo-based Venezuelan’s own shocking first-round stoppage loss at the hands of Juan Carlos Salgado two years ago.
Apparently, the pace was furious and given the pair’s Golden Boy connection, I wouldn’t be surprised to see “The Problem” and “El Niño de Oro” meet at 135 pounds on HBO down the line.
WBA light welterweight champion Amir Khan of England got some good work from welterweight Cleotis “Mookie” Pendarvis. “King” Khan may be trainer Freddie Roach’s prized pupil for this week’s festivities in Las Vegas, but middleweight Peter Quillin of Grand Rapids, Mich., has a spot on the undercard against late replacement Jason LeHoullier.
“Kid Chocolate” went four frames with WBA welterweight champ Viacheslav Senchenko of Ukraine, three hard rounds with top amateur heavyweight Steve Geffrard, and three more with another fighter. Geffrard, from Boca Raton, Fla., was the 2010 USA Boxing Athlete of the Year.
Freddie Roach has vowed to work closely with the 2012 U.S. Olympic Team, and with the Olympic Trials only two weeks away, a few amateurs have shown up at his doorstep, among them Geffrard and flyweight Rau’shee Warren, a friend of Broner’s from Cincinnati.
Warren, a former amateur world champion who competed for the Los Angeles Matadors in the World Series of Boxing, worked the mitts with Roach.
WBO super bantamweight champion Ana Julaton also hit the mitts. Rumor is that “The Hurricane” of Daly City, Calif., might have a unification bout on the horizon with WBA holder Chanttall Martinez of Panama.
Ryan is a member of the Boxing Writers Association of America. Follow him on Twitter: @rmaq28