Edgar Berlanga will face someone on a level comparable to his previous opponent in his next fight.
BoxingScene.com has learned that Brooklyn’s Berlanga and Colombia’s Alexis Angulo have agreed to meet in a 10-round super middleweight match June 11 at Madison Square Garden’s Hulu Theater in New York. ESPN will televise their fight as the main event of a tripleheader the night before the annual National Puerto Rican Day Parade in Manhattan.
Berlanga (19-0, 16 KOs) defeated Toronto’s Steve Rolls (21-2, 12 KOs) in his last bout, another 10-rounder ESPN aired as a main event March 19. That card headlined by Berlanga, who won each of his first 16 professional bouts by first-round knockout, drew a capacity crowd of 5,158 to Hulu Theater.
The 24-year-old Berlanga has become a popular boxer both at the box office and on social media. He didn’t show the type of progress versus Rolls, however, for his handlers to match him against an opponent that would be considered a significant step up in class.
Berlanga beat Rolls by unanimous decision.
He won seven rounds apiece on the scorecards of judges Tom Carusone (97-93) and Mark Consentino (97-93). Judge Frank Lombardi (96-94) scored six rounds for Berlanga.
Berlanga’s victory over Rolls marked his return from surgery in October to repair a torn left biceps. He sustained that injury during his prior appearance – a 10-round, unanimous-decision defeat of Argentina’s Marcelo Coceres on October 9 at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas.
Coceres (30-3-1, 16 KOs) recorded a flash knockdown against Berlanga in the ninth round, but Berlanga fought through a serious injury and won seven rounds on all three cards that night (96-93, 96-93, 96-93).
Angulo (27-2, 23 KOs) has lost only to undefeated former super middleweight champions David Benavidez and Gilberto Ramirez. The 38-year-old Angulo also is considered a harder puncher than Rolls, another 38-year-old veteran whose two defeats came against middleweight champion Gennadiy Golovkin and Berlanga.
Benavidez beat Angulo by technical knockout after 10 one-sided rounds in August 2020. Benavidez (25-0, 22 KOs) was stripped of his WBC 168-pound title the day before he beat Angulo because Benavidez came in 2¾ pounds overweight.
Four bouts before Benavidez beat him, Ramirez easily out-pointed Angulo in their 12-round fight for Ramirez’s WBO super middleweight title. Mexico’s Ramirez (43-0, 29 KOs) won that fight, which ESPN aired, by scores of 120-108, 119-109 and 119-109 in June 2018 at Chesapeake Energy Arena in Oklahoma City.
Between his losses to Ramirez and Benavidez, Angulo upset previously unbeaten American Anthony Sims Jr. (then 20-0, 18 KOs) by split decision in a 10-rounder that took place in January 2020 at Meridian at Island Gardens in Miami.
Keith Idec is a senior writer/columnist for BoxingScene.com. He can be reached on Twitter @Idecboxing.