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Edwin Rodriguez-Azea Augustama on Golovkin-Rubio card

Fighters Network
18
Sep

Edwin Rodriguez will end a near one-year ring absence in a light heavyweight bout against Azea Augustama on Oct. 18. The 10-round bout will be in support of Gennady Golovkin’s WBA middleweight title defense against Marco Antonio Rubio at StubHub Center in Carson, Calif., Rodriguez’s promoter, Lou DiBella, said on Wednesday.

Rodriguez (24-1, 16 knockouts) was last in action when he lost a one-sided unanimous decision to THE RING/WBA super middleweight champion Andre Ward last November. The titles were not on the line for Rodriguez, who missed the 168-pound weight limit by two pounds.

“Obviously, we were disappointed with what happened with the weigh-in against Ward. I don’t think that his fight with Ward was representative of who he really is,” said DiBella of Rodriguez, who is trained by Ronnie Shields.

“I don’t think that it was a good night for him and I think that he’s a lot better. So we’re looking for a real good performance out of Edwin against Augustama and that we’ll see some big things to follow. He’s going to stay at light heavyweight and we think that he can be a force within the light heavyweight division.”



Augustama (17-1, 9 KOs) has won eight consecutive bouts, three by knockout, and was last in action for a unanimous decision over Cory Cummings in June. Augustama, 31, suffered his lone defeat in January 2011 by majority decision to Denis Grachev, who was stopped in the first round by Rodriguez in in July 2013.

“Rodriguez is fighting Azea Augustama. We wanted to bring him up and Augustama is a legit guy. We wanted to put him in with a real light heavyweight and a guy who is not used to losing,” said DiBella. “What I want to be able to do is to assess him as a light heavyweight. We want him to make a presence in the division and we’ll have a good idea about Edwin and where he’s going after he comes out of this fight.”

Prior to facing Ward, Rodriguez, 29, had won a unanimous decision over previously unbeaten Ezequiel Osvaldo Maderna in March 2013 that was followed by the destruction of Grachev in a contracted 171.5-pound bout.

“Obviously, he killed himself to make weight in the fight with Ward and it was not a good performance. He did show a lot of heart and he kept fighting,” said DiBella. “But going into the fight, Edwin didn’t give himself a real chance to win, so he’s got to be more professional in the future to achieve his goals and I think that this is the beginning of a new era for him. That’s going to begin in what is an important fight.”

 

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