Foster Fights Friday

O’Shaquie Foster of Orange will make his third appearance on ShoBox this Friday night.  ShoBox is part of Showtime’s live boxing matches that they’ve been doing for 15 years on the pay cable network.

Foster, a featherweight with a professional mark of 10-1 with 7 KO’s, is taking on Rolando Chinea (12-1-1, 6KO) in a fight scheduled for eight rounds at Foxwoods Casino in Mashantucket, Connecticut.  It’s scheduled to be the first of a four bout card that starts at 9pm.  This will be Chinea’s first fight on ShoBox.

Last Feb. 19, he began to live up to expectations when he rebounded from a sub-standard performance in his ShoBox debut (an eight-round decision loss to Samuel Teah in November 2015) to register a seventh-round TKO over previously undefeated Lavisas Williams (8-0-1).

Foster, 22, dropped southpaw Williams four times – in the second, third, fourth and seventh rounds. After the final knockdown in the seventh, the fight was stopped at 52 seconds into the round.

“That was called My Redemption fight,” Foster told KOGT.  “I let a lot of people down in my first fight on ShoBox, including myself.  Now I’m focusing on Chinea and with a win I hope to look at getting a shot at a title fight sometime next year.  I’ll want to keep fighting every 3-6 months.”

Foster is now training in Virginia but he tries to come home when he can because most of his family still lives here.

“Ever since I moved to Virginia to train, my conditioning, mentality and confidence has gone way up and that was the difference from my first fight to my last fight on ShoBox. On July 22, I will be even that much better.’’

In 2012 Foster came close but fell short during the Olympic Trials of making the Olympic team.

“I just want to keep doing my thing, fighting for that belt,” Foster said.  “I hope to take another step Friday night.”

Another fight on the card of local interest is Adam Lopez vs. Roman Reynoso.  Lopez is trained by Ronnie Shields of Port Arthur, who made a name for himself in the ring in the 1970’s and has gone on to work with guys like Pernell “Sweet Pea” Whitaker.