Dominic Wade ready to make move in stacked middleweight division
Dominic Wade fights Sam Soliman on Friday. (Stephanie Trapp, Showtime)
Dominic Wade's professional debut at the age of 18, against a fighter twice his age, lasted exactly 28 seconds.
Wade, now an undefeated, rising middleweight from the Washington D.C. area, knocked out his opponent, Chris Davis, in less than a half-minute. Davis never fought again.
This boxing thing, Wade figured, wasn't so tough. "I'm like, 'Man, this is sweet right here.' " he said. "Then I realized, 'Yeah, it's going to take a little more work than this' " to get where he wanted to go.
Seven years later, through plenty of highs and lows, Wade (17-0, 12 KOs) is still not where he wants to be, but he's getting closer.
The kid from Largo, Md., who started boxing as a 9-year-old as punishment from his dad for fighting in the streets, makes his national television debut Friday against 41-year-old former IBF middleweight champion Sam Soliman (Showtime, 10:35 p.m. ET) from the Little Creek Casino Resort in Shelton, Wash.
"Man, I always wanted to fight on TV, so now I'm fighting, and I'm movin' up and doing my thing," said Wade, who hopes this fight gets him noticed and puts him in line for bigger fights in one of boxing's most stacked divisions. It was not easy getting to this point.
Wade did not fight at all from February 2011 to February 2013. He attributes his two-year hiatus to "mostly emotional difficulties," he told Paste BN Sports. "Stuff like that that was going on, like contract difficulties, all mixed in together, and I was held back from going on for awhile."
He never considered quitting, he said, and never strayed from training. "I was always in the gym, I was still working out, just wasn't getting no fights," he said.
Now, under the tutelage of co-trainers Jay Spencil and Kevin Smalls, Wade is ready to make his big move. This will be his seventh fight since his return, but Soliman (44-12, 18 KOs), from Australia, is his first opponent of note. Solimon, who has twice defeated former champion Felix Sturm, is coming off losing his title belt to Jermain Taylor in October. Taylor has since been stripped of the belt due to ongoing legal problems.
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Soliman injured his knee in that fight, but he says the knee is fine after more than four months of rehab.
Wade hopes the TV exposure will get him noticed and lead to a title shot because he's believes he's just about ready. "I feel like it's time for a real test," Wade said. "It's time to see where I'm at. I could have fought easier, but I've been working hard at the gym and this is the time for me to start moving toward a world title shot" by the end of the year, or next year for sure.
And a year from now? "I'll be a world champion, taking over the division," he says confidently. "One of the top guys in the division."
Soliman says he's nobody's steppingstone.
"Wade is a good boxer, a smart kid who will try and keep you at bay. But I've fought 30-40 guys with that style," Soliman said Thursday at the weigh-in. "He's talented and I don't want to take anything away from him, but you need to have some tough fights. I know they see me as their ticket to a world ranking, a 41-year-old former champion. But they picked the wrong guy.''
The ShoBox telecast will also feature promising super welterweight Erickson Lubin (10-0, 7 KOs) against Ayi Bruce (23-9, 15 KOs) and heavyweights Oscar Rivas (16-0, 11 KOs) and Jason Pettaway (17-2, 10 KOs). Both fights are eight rounds.
The scheduled co-feature between former Marine and 2012 U.S. Olympian Jamel Herring (11-0, 7 KOs), and Mexico's Oscar Cortes (25-2, 13 KOs) was cancelled Thursday when Cortez came in overweight.