Photo Credit: Big Knockout Boxing.
Big Knockout Boxing announced their second event Thursday, headlined by BKB middleweight champion Gabriel Rosado taking on Curtis Stevens April 4, at the Mandalay Bay Events Center in Las Vegas and shown live on pay-per-view at 10 p.m. EST.
Rosado won the title at the inaugural BKB event in August, also held at the Mandalay Bay, where he defeated Bryan Vera via Round 6 TKO.
The fact that Rosado has fought in the unconventional “Pit”—a 17-foot in diameter circular ring, that instead of being surrounded by ropes on a elevated surface, is grounded and surrounded by a padded incline, that is known as the “safety zone”—that the BKB bouts take place in, the Philadelphia native will have the experience advantage in the bout.
“You can definitely put the experience factor on my side, performing in BKB already,” Rosado said. “I’m familiar with the ring. I’m just familiar with the surroundings of it.
“But, at the end of the day, being a true fighter, once the bell rings, you kind of lose yourself in the fight. You don’t think too much of it; at least I didn’t. Once the bell rung, it didn’t feel no different. I just had to fight.”
Aside from the ring, BKB differs from traditional boxing by the rounds being shorter at two minutes, as opposed to boxing’s usual three-minute long rounds.
The difference in the length of rounds is something that Stevens said he can use to his advantage when he steps into the “Pit” to battle Rosado.
“BKB is just two minutes. Regular boxing is three minutes. So, when I heard it was two minutes, I’m like, oh, it’s just like the amateur days – you get in, you get out,” Stevens said. “So, I think that’s just going to rewind me back into time when I was 17, 16, 15. You just got to get in there and just put the pain on them. There ain’t much more to do.”
The BKB 2 event will also feature the debut of the company’s new in-glove micro chip technology that will take punch stats to a new level. The chip will use Bluetooth technology to give television viewers—not those attending the fight live, as judges maybe swayed by the stats being showed in the arena—real time punch stats that will show a punch’s speed, and the pounds of force delivered by the selected blow (see main photo above).
BKB hypes it’s events up by stating the unique format and environment the fighters square off in is to help produce more KO endings. In their first event last fall, out of the nine bouts, four of them ended via KO, which is a solid KO-to-fight-ratio and something that had those who viewed it talking.
Despite the buzz after BKB 1 in August, the company waited until now to produce their second show, despite chief executive Bruce Binkow expressing his hope for another BKB event before 2014 was over. That didn’t happen,
“I think that the answer is that I think that the BKB management wisely chose to build a card that was worthy of the fans’ support,” Binkow said. “The reaction last time was so overwhelmingly positive, and it certainly would have been easy to squeeze another one before the end of last year, but a lot of time was spent on trying to craft the right card with the right fighters, the right styles to be able to deliver another stellar event.”
With both Stevens and Vera being similar in fight styles, as they both are aggressive fighters, Rosado hopes for a repeat performance on April 4.
“Styles are not exactly the same, but I think in this format, it’ll play out the same because, Curtis, he says he’s aggressive,” Rosado said. “So, I feel that his style will suit me and it’ll kind of play out how the Bryan Vera fight played out.”
