Highly touted prospect Frankie Gomez narrowly passed the toughest test of his budding pro career by scoring a hard-fought majority decision over Adrian Granados in an entertaining eight-round Solo Boxeo Tecate main event in Chicago on Friday.

Gomez, who signed with Golden Boy Promotions with much fanfare early last year, won the lightweight bout by scores of 78-73, 77-74 and 76-76, but he had to gut out the final rounds against Granados, who gave as good as he got over the second half of the slugfest.

Gomez (11-0, 8 knockouts), a 19-year-old amateur standout from East Los Angeles, landed the harder and cleaner power shots in the early rounds — including a short right hand that dropped Granados at the end of the second round. However, Granados (8-2-1, 5 KOs), a 22-year-old Chicago-area native, outmaneuvered Gomez in the middle rounds of the bout and outworked the better-known prospect down the stretch.

Both fighters displayed relentless fighting spirit, iron wills, excellent conditioning and solid chins throughout the evenly matched contest. Both knew that they had been in a good scsrap after the final bell. Gomez ended the fight with a nick under his right eye. Granados, who is promoted by Chicago-based 8 Count Productions, sported swollen left eye and a cut on the right side of his nose.

Gomez, who weighed in at 136 pounds (as did Granados), had been training hard with new coach Abel Sanchez in Big Bear Lake, Calif., where he’s had months of quality sparring against lightweight contenders Urbano Antillon and Robert Guerrero.

It’s a fair bet that the lackadaisical version of Gomez, who weighed over 145 pounds against journeyman Jose Lugo, would have been overwhelmed by Granados, who made his hometown fans proud with his effort and probably made a lot of new fans who watched the fight on Telefutura.

A rematch would appear to be in order (and much anticipated) down the line.

In the opening bout of the Telefutura broadcast, junior lightweight prospect Omar Figueroa made short work of Marco Herrera, stopping the journeyman at 1:19 of the second round.

After a careful first round, Figueroa (13-0-1, 10 Kos), a popular 21-year-old Texan, took the fight to Herrera (6-7-1, 2 KOs) at the start of the second round and dropped the 23-year-old Colorado native with a short hook.

Herrera beat the count and bought himself a few extra seconds due to a dislodged mouthpiece, but he was laid out flat after catching another hook during Figueroa’s furious follow-up attack.