By Keith Idec

Glen Tapia is scheduled to return to Freddie Roach’s Wild Card Boxing Gym in Hollywood on Monday to begin helping Miguel Cotto prepare for his middleweight championship showdown with Canelo Alvarez.

Tapia is expected to serve as one of Cotto’s primary sparring partners for the remainder of training camp for his HBO Pay-Per-View main event against Alvarez on Nov. 21 at Mandalay Bay Events Center in Las Vegas. The 25-year-old Tapia (23-2, 15 KOs), of Passaic, N.J., also will begin preparing for his own return to the ring following a fourth-round technical knockout loss to Michel Soro (27-1-1, 17 KOs) on May 8 at Prudential Center in Newark, N.J.

Tapia – who, like Cotto, is trained by Roach – is scheduled to encounter Lenwood Dozier (9-8-1, 4 KOs), of Suitland, Maryland, in a non-televised six-rounder Nov. 14 in Los Angeles. If Tapia defeats Dozier, who has lost three consecutive fights, and comes out of their contest unscathed, his handlers expect to a pursue a more meaningful fight against a ranked opponent sometime early in 2016.

They think Tapia still can make 154 pounds, the junior middleweight limit he struggled mightily to reach the day before France’s Soro stopped him in a USBA/NABO title fight, but also are open to the 5-foot-11 Tapia moving up to middleweight for the right fight.

Tapia was ranked No. 2 by the WBO and No. 6 by the IBF at 154 pounds when Soro beat him. Before suffering that loss, Tapia had won three straight bouts by TKO to rebuild his career after a brutal sixth-round knockout defeat to hard-hitting James Kirkland (32-2, 28 KOs) in his HBO debut in December 2013 in Atlantic City.

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.