Glen Tapia To Fight Michel Soro 5/8 in Newark, TruTV
Apr 6, 2015 • 8:48 AM ET
By Keith Idec
Junior middleweight contender Glen Tapia will face France’s Michel Soro (25-1-1, 15KOs) in the main event of a May 8 card at Prudential Center in Newark, New Jersey.
Tapia (23-1, 15 KOs), of nearby Passaic, New Jersey, will defend his NABO 154-pound title in a 10-round fight that’ll be broadcast as the main event of a TruTV telecast. Top Rank Inc., Tapia’s promoter, announced last week that it has partnered with TruTV on a new boxing series that’ll begin May 1 in Las Vegas.
The telecast also will include fights featuring Long Island-based light heavyweight Sean Monaghan and Julian Rodriguez, a top prospect from Hasbrouck Heights, New Jersey.
An opponent for Monaghan (23-0, 15 KOs) hasn’t been chosen. Rodriguez (9-0, 8 KOs), a former national Golden Gloves champion promoted by Top Rank, is set to encounter Kenya’s Peter Oluoch (14-8-2, 8 KOs) in an eight-round junior welterweight fight.
The 25-year-old Tapia, who’s trained by Hall-of-Famer Freddie Roach, most recently stopped Australia’s Daniel Dawson (40-5-1, 26 KOs) in the third round of a March 7 fight in Macau, China. Soro, 27, has won two bouts by knockout since fighting to a 10-round majority draw with middleweight prospect Antoine Douglas (17-0-1, 11 KOs) on July 25 in Verona, N.Y.
Tickets ($25-$105) for the card headlined by the Tapia-Soro fight will go on sale Friday (ticketmaster.com; prucenter.com; 201-864-7760).
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.
