Tomorrow night people will be tuning in to Adrien Broner vs. Gavin Rees in Atlantic City, but before that, fight fans will be able to see another solid night of boxing on ESPN 2’s Friday Night Fights. Fans will be treated to 1 of the top 15 Light Middleweights in the world as Dominican Republic’s own Delvin Rodriguez will be in Connecticut at the Mohegan Sun Casino to square off against the 34 year old undefeated George Tahdooahnippah in a 10 round bout. The biggest question regarding this fight is how Rodriguez and Tahdooahnippah will respond to the 157 catch weight that has been agreed to in this fight.
Delvin Rodriguez (26-6-3 with 14 KOs) has never weighed in over 153 lbs, and that was over more than a year ago when he fought Pawel Wolak in 2011, twice. He will enter a fight with a 157 lb catch weight and now this turns into a solid technical fighter from a lower weight against fighter that is more used to the bigger weight, but has not faced any high level of competition at all in his career thus far. The biggest advantage that Rodriguez has in this fight is his boxing experience. Even though Delvin is 2 years the younger of the two, he has been fighting for 5 more years and has fought 2 more fights than Tahdooahnippah.
George Tahdooahnippah (31-0-1 with 23 KOs) is stepping way up in competition as his best fights have been against the 8 loss Gundrick King and then a bout against an inexperienced 7-1 Tyrel Brown. He now has to get down to 157, a weight he has never fought below in his career. He will be the naturally bigger guy of course, so if he can get his weight down with being too weight drained, he could pull off the upset. He has shown power in his previous fights, but we don’t know how many of those previous opponents had a chin. The bottom line for him is this is his 1st big chance against a legitimate fighter and if he doesn’t take advantage of it, it may be his last chance.
Because of Rodriguez has fought this big in weight and Tahdooahnippah never fought this small, it actually makes for a good interesting catch weight. Because of that, I’m going to go with the more experienced fighter and the fighter with the better resume. Rodriguez has fought two fights against Wolak and he had a fight against 1 of the top 154 lb guys in the world right now in Austin Trout. Even though he lost to Trout badly and had a draw and a win against Wolak, I think the pressure of facing better opponents will help him in this fight. Tahdooahnippah has been fighting for almost 10 years and this will be his 1st tough opponent. This could come back to bite me like the Vera fight did a couple weeks ago, but I’m going to go with Rodriguez in a 10 round unanimous decision. So before you tune into HBO to see Adrien Broner try to once against backup his mouth and show his enormous talent, tune in to see who can adjust better to their new previously untouched weight and come out with the win on national TV on Friday Night Fights. Enjoy the fight.
