Sosa’s return to ring delayed

Dean Juipe

Thursday, June 17, 1999 | 9:54 a.m.

Among fighters and within the gym, Merqui Sosa is still regarded as a very tough guy.

He doesn't have the greatest record in the world and he's starting to get up there in years, yet the respect is still there. Anyone who steps into the ring with Sosa can expect to have his hands full.

"I always give it everything I've got," he said this week at the Nevada Partners gym. "If people come to see me fight, they get what they pay for. I do my best."

Sosa, 33, is 33-8-2 and is scheduled to headline the next card at The Orleans. That card, however, was postponed Wednesday from its originally announced June 25 date and will, instead, go either July 16 or July 30.

Whenever it comes off it'll be Sosa's second main event at the hotel, as he fought NABF super middleweight champion Thomas Tate in something of an epic battle back in January. Tate won that hard-fought skirmish by 10th-round TKO and has since relinquished the NABF title to challenge IBF champion Sven Ottke Sept. 4 in Germany.

"I was happy with what I did in that fight," Sosa said of his bout with Tate. "But I was asking too much of my body. It was a good fight but he was better prepared than myself."

In an effort to correct that lack of complete preparedness, Sosa has hired a trainer for the first time since 1992. He trained himself during those intervening years.

"Fighting is the only thing I know how to do," he said, "but it gets a little harder as you get older."

If he does have a regret, it's obviously the fact that he never was under the wing of a wealthy promoter or manager who could see to his supplemental needs.

"When I came to the United States (from the Dominican Republic), I couldn't speak English," he said. "That threw me off because I couldn't get the right people behind me and I didn't go anywhere.

"That's been a problem my whole career. I never had any money to help me along."

Left to his own resources, Sosa has forged a decent career that twice included the NABF championship at 175 pounds. But he has since decided he belongs at 168.

"I could fight at light heavyweight if it was for a title," he said. "But it's too much weight for me, especially since most of the guys at that weight are coming down from cruiserweight or weigh as much as a cruiserweight by fight time."

He's hoping to stay busy, although now he has to put the brakes on his training due to this delay at The Orleans.

"I'm feeling very serious about boxing and I need to fight regularly," he said. "I'm giving the sport everything I've got, 100 percent."