This Friday, January 9, 2015, one of the nation’s capital’s most talented young fighters, Dusty Hernandez-Harrison (24-0, 13 KOs), hits the big stage in New York City.
Hernandez-Harrison takes on southpaw and Long Island native, Tommy Rainone (22-5-1, 4 KOs), for the vacant WBC Continental Americas welterweight title in the main event of Roc Nation’s first ever boxing show, which will be held at The Theater at Madison Square Garden.
For the 20-year-old DC native, the Garden is a familiar place, having fought in the legendary venue a couple of times since 2013. But, this will be the first time Hernandez-Harrison headlines at the Garden and a lot more eyes will be watching him this time, not only to see how he performs, but also what type of theatrics Roc Nation has in store.
Hip-Hop artists and other high profile personalities are expected to be out in large numbers, including the face of “The Roc,” Jay-Z. Roc Nation’s COO David Itskowitch made it clear during a conference call earlier this week that the company is not taking this whole boxing thing lightly.
“We have looked around at fights and at boxing in general and if you look at a boxing event now it really hasn’t changed a tremendous amount in the last however many decades. We want to really amp up the fan experience at the event. There will be other bells and whistles at the event that I have not even gotten into that are going to make things even more enjoyable for fans and to keep the fans engaged.” – David Itskowitch
The fight card will be televised live on Fox Sports 1 and a stellar performance from Hernandez-Harrison could help Roc Nation arrive on the scene in a big way.
So is all of this pressure getting to the “Beltway Boriqua?” Doesn’t seem like it.
“I would just like to say everything has been really fun about this event,” said Hernandez-Harrison during the same conference call earlier this week. Spoken like a kid who is truly just taking it all in and enjoying the ride.
And who can blame him? After all, he’s headlining the first important boxing card of 2015 and is at the fighting forefront of a brand new promotional company looking to make a splash in boxing.
But while Dusty has been enjoying the ride thus far, he knows that he must continue to improve inside the ring and fight better competition–something many boxing pundits have been calling for.
“It is important for me to develop. I can’t keep fighting the same types of fighters and the same skill level. It is important for me to take this fight to become the best boxer that I can be… He [Rainone] is probably the slickest and craftiest fighter I have fought other than Michael Clark but I think it will be a tougher fight than that,” said Hernandez-Harrison.
Photo by Marilyn Paulino/RBRBoxing
Against Clark–in November of 2014–Hernandez-Harrison delivered a blistering knockout in Round 1, much to the delight of the hometown fans. In Rainone, Hernandez-Harrison should expect to see more angles and movement and may need to be patient while feeling “The Razor” out in the early rounds.
While the nickname may be menacing, Rainone only has four knockouts to his credit and probably won’t be looking to stay in the pocket against the younger, stronger Hernandez-Harrison.
We’ve seen Hernandez-Harrison deal with adversity, so even if he gets in trouble in this fight, we should expect him to have the poise to work his way out of it. He suffered a knockdown on ESPN2 against Michael Balasi in 2014, but he came back to win a convincing unanimous decision.
One major area to watch in this fight will be whether or not Hernandez-Harrison decides to fight small. Ever since the first time I saw him fight, I’ve been impressed by his length and effective jab. The baffling thing is that he doesn’t like to consistently use those gifts, often times electing to fight in close quarters, which makes for exciting exchanges (like his fight with Tim Witherspoon Jr.) but it also makes things unnecessarily difficult.
It’ll be a good idea for the the 6’0″ Hernandez-Harrison to use his reach and set up his combo’s behind an effective jab against the 5’8″ Rainone.
“I don’t know how many more fights it will take to get to the big one. It depends on me and how I look in fights. My team will know after each fight and what kind of test that opponent gave to me. It’s on me and how good I look,” said Hernandez-Harrison.
Even though Hernandez-Harrison and his team are happy with the pace at which his career is moving, a stellar performance could certainly open some eyes and line up a major title shot, sooner rather than later.
