Gabe Rosado has fought a who’s who of stars through his career, but there is one boxer he believes he missed out on facing.
Rosado boxed, among others, Gennadiy Golovkin, Peter “Kid Chocolate” Quillin, Martin Murray, Danny Jacobs, Jermell Charlo, David Lemieux and countless other leading names.
On Saturday, he will face Ty Mitchell on a Misfits bill in Derby.
It has been 14 years since Rosado said he hit the best run of his career, when he scalped Jesus Soto Karass, Sechew Powell and Charles Whitaker in back-to-back fights.
They were all at 154lbs, and the lure of money to face Golovkin at 160lbs proved too much to resist next.
That is something he regrets today.
“And I had a conversation with Canelo about it and he was just laughing, having a drink,” the 40-year-old Philadelphian recalled. “And he’s like, ‘Your problem is that you fought so many tough fights back-to-back.’ He’s like, ‘You never gave yourself a break, that's not how you do it.’ He said, ‘You fight a tough fight and you get back into the mix with a fight that keeps you in a groove and then you get it back into a big fight.’ He said, ‘You fought the big guys back-to-back-to-back-to-back, dude.’ He said, ‘You fucking wore yourself out.’
“We’re laughing about it, but he was right. But it was just who I was, man. I ain't turn nothing down.”
“Obviously there’s a lot of big wins in there, it was my run at 154 when I clicked in the division and I ranked number one in the division and I knocked out Soto Karass. I knocked out Sechew Powell and then I knocked out Charles Whitaker and that was on NBC Sports. And when I went on that run, man, I felt unstoppable at ’54. I was like a machine. And unfortunately, I moved up and fought Golovkin after. But that run at 54, man. That was like a hell of a run. I felt really great in that time.”
And it is actually Canelo who, if he had been able to face anyone in his career, that Rosado would have loved the opportunity of fighting.
“We were supposed to fight Canelo when he ended up fighting Amir Khan,” Rosado said.
“Okay. So I had just beat Joshua Clottey and me and Canelo were going to fight at ‘54. And Golden Boy was like, ‘We’re like 90 per cent there. We just got to get the paperwork and whatever, whatever.’ And I'm like, ‘Okay, great.’
“And then next thing you know, Amir Khan comes out of nowhere and he chooses to move up in weight to fight Canelo.
“So yeah, the Canelo fight didn't happen because of Amir Khan. I feel like ‘54, I feel like it would have been a good fight. Canelo was a different kind of fighter at that time, too.”
