As impressive as their records are—a combined 35-2 with 25 knockouts—odds are if you gave Jamel Herring and Luis Eduardo Flores a shot of truth serum, they’d each admit they haven’t exactly faced a roster of championship-caliber competition.
But that changes February 9 at the Sands Bethlehem Events Center in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, where Herring (14-0, 8 KOs) and Flores (21-2, 17 KOs) will do battle in a 135-pound throwdown scheduled for 10 rounds (Fox Sports 1, 11 p.m. ET/8 p.m. PT).
Herring returns to the ring for the first time since October 3, when he scored a decisive 10-round unanimous decision over Yakubu Amidu in his hometown of Cincinnati. It was the deepest the 30-year-old southpaw has gone in a fight since turning pro in December 2012, and capped a year in which he won four times in less than seven months.
In contrast to Herring’s very active 2015, Flores fought just twice, most recently on April 11 in his native Colombia, where he took down Gustavo Sandoval via eight-round unanimous decision. For the 28-year-old Flores, this bout against Herring will be just his third since dropping a 10-round unanimous decision to Jose Luis Prieto in October 2014.
While Flores does have two losses on his ledger, he’ll enter the ring against Herring knowing he can beat an undefeated fighter: As part of a six-fight winning streak from August 2013 to August 2014, Flores scored a first-round knockout of Miguel Berchelt, a heavy-handed Mexican who at the time was 21-0 with 17 knockouts.
Can Flores duplicate that performance in his U.S. debut? It certainly doesn’t figure to be easy, considering Herring— a 2012 U.S. Olympian and former Marine—has won all but one of his professional fights by stoppage or unanimous decision.
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