Lou Dibella has confirmed that super middleweight standout Edwin “La Bomba” Rodriguez will meet Jason “Monstruo” Escalera on September 29th. According to Dibella, the venue isn’t quite set, but he did say that he’d like to bring the fight to Connecticut. Dibella, who was a guest on thaboxingvoice.com’s radio show Thursday, said the card will be a tripleheader on HBO and it will co-feature a fight between the undefeated featherweight prospect Luis “Orlandito” Del Valle and former undisputed super flyweight champion Vic Darchinyan. The opener for that card hasn’t yet been announced, however Dibella did say he’d have that announcement soon enough.
You may remember the proposed series from HBO that would mirror a ShoBox style format which would allow up and coming fighters the chance to be showcased on HBO. That deal included promoters Lou Dibella, Gary Shaw and Top Rank; that series has since fell through. However, Dibella did tell thaboxingvoice.com that HBO has made room in the schedule for some cards that would cater to the proposed format, this being the first of others to come.
The announcement came on the heels of a question regarding Rodriguez (21-0) and the fight he turned down against Adonis Stevenson. When asked about that issue Dibella said “I’m not taking a guy to a foreign country who’s as good as Edwin, I’m not taking him [Rodriguez] to Canada to fight a guy who all he can do is punch and all you get is an elimination bout and the possibility that maybe they’ll let you fight for a title.” Dibella obviously has his fighter’s best interest in mind and said later on an unrelated matter that his job is to get his fighter’s “the best [deals] possible.”
Instead, Dibella feels that the right move for his fighter at this time is to match him against Joe DeGuardia promoted fighter Escalera (13-0-1) who has scored a KO/TKO in all but one of his wins. Lou has high regards for Esclera and believes the fight will provide tremendous action. “Escalera is a tough, tough kid and throws a tremendous number of punches and he’s [Escalera] rugged and it figures to be good TV,” said Dibella.
Dibella also has high hopes for the co-main event that would pit Del Valle (16-0) against Darchinyan; Dibella thinks it will “be a war.” Thaboxingvoice.com has a close relationship with Del Valle, who wasn’t yet aware the fight between he and Darchinyan had been made, though he wasn’t available for comment after the show. The styles of these two fighters suggest a fan friendly fight.
Del Valle has some decent fighters on his resume like Dat Nguyen and more recently Christopher Martin, but Darchinyan is by far the most notable fighter “Orlandito” will have fought thus far. Darchinyan has had some pretty deflating losses his last couple times out losing to highly touted Anselmo Moreno and more recently losing to Shinsuke Yamanaka back in April. Since Darchinyan’s bantamweight tournament loss to Abner Mares back in December 2010 he is 2-2.
