Report on Austin Trout, David Rodriguez and Abie Han

By Louie Burke

Austin’s had a great camp for his upcoming battle against Nielson Julio Tapia. Yesterday was the last day of the hard sparring and he’ll have a few light rounds of sparring today. This’ll be his last real hard day of training. He’s weighed out at 157 ½ after practice. He’s trained hard and only took a couple of days off after his last fight a month ago. He’s looking forward to tapering down training camp and stepping in the ring Sept 5th , where the number 3 WBA ranking will be at stake. Originally we were going to import sparring, but after seeing video on Tapia, we felt Siju’s style of boxing was close enough that we could keep the sparring in house. Besides Siju, Austin was helped this time around by Tim Meek and Abie Han along with Cornelius Shuler.

David Rodriguez been preparing for his fight against veteran Robert Davis, also for the number 3 spot with the WBA. This will be in Monterrey, Mexico on Sept. 12th . The last week of camp Dave looked as good as I’ve ever seen him, we worked out some kinks in his foot positioning, after that he was looking good and cracking hard. This should be a good fight for David and set him up for some name opponents and bigger pay days During camp, Dave probably had the most consistent sparring in his career. The guys that got Dave ready for his bout were "Big Rod" Willis and Arron Lyons. Since I’ll be in Panama on Tuesday, Dave went on to Houston to finish his training there with Bobby Benton. We’ll all hook up in Monterrey the day after Austin’s fight in Panama.


Also fighting in Monterrey on David’s undercard will be Abie Han, who’s looking very good. We had to nurse a bruised bicep in his right arm for a couple of weeks, he still worked with Austin, but minimized the use or his right hand. As of today he said it feels a lot better and can now straighten it out. He will be ready by the 12th !

We plan on leaving Las Cruces at 5 Tuesday morning to the Juarez airport then leaving for Panama at 9am and arriving at 6:30pm.

Sammy was told by the Dr. to take it easy on his shoulder for at least 6 weeks to let the rotor cuff tear to heal, if all heals well he should be back in action in a couple months if not sooner. Also, Ricky Vasquez has been training hard and is looking for a fight.

Thanks for your support and I’ll try and keep you updated while we’re in Panama and Mexico.