Demetrius Andrade Ready to Entertain on ESPN

January 14th, 2010

Former US Olympian Demetrius Andrade (8-0, 6 KO’s) will open up 2010 with 6 round fight against journeyman Bernardo Guereca (15-9, 3 KO’s) this Friday in Laredo, Texas. The bout will be broadcast on ESPN as part of its Friday Night Fights series.

“I’m ready to do my thing and put on an entertaining show for the fans”, Andrade told 8countnews.com

Andrade, a Providence native, goes into this fight having lived learned from his previous 8 pro bouts. After racking up easy wins against soft opponents during the first 7 fights of his career, Andrade was forced to face adversity in his most recent fight.

He was taking on another then unbeaten fighter, Chris Chatman, from San Diego. Having rolled through his first 7 opponents so easily, many expected Andrade to do the same against this unknown. After all, while Chatman sported a good record, he was flown in from the other side of the country to fight Andrade in front of his hometown fans in Rhode Island.

Unfortunately for Andrade, that wasn’t the case. Chatman had an amazing ability to withstand Andrade’s punches, while coming forward continuously, and landing some good shots of his own. It was the first time in Andrade’s career that he was noticeably buzzed by an opponent’s punches. Nevertheless Andrade won a hard fought unanimous decision and their clash was later named the 8countnews.com New England fight of the year.

“It opened my eyes”, Andrade said, “It made me realize I need to train differently and prepare for these tough guys. I sometimes need to tighten up and realize that there will be guys who can keep walking into a bunch of punches and still be standing.”

Andrade blames some “personal issues” for a lack of focus in training leading up to the fight with Chatman. He says they will not be an issue when he steps into the ring Friday night.

His father and head trainer Paul Andrade said, “(Demetrius) just had to learn to listen to his teachers a little more.”

The elder Andrade, who is joined by fellow New England trainer Dave Keefe in his son’s corner, feels that Demetrius picked up some bad habits while training with the US Olympic team in Colorado for over a year prior to heading to Beijing on 2008.

“He wasn’t cutting angles properly and he wasn’t sitting properly and sometimes he was leaning forward making it easy for guys to grab him”, he said, “We’ve corrected those things and we’re ready to move forward.”

Right now the focus is on Friday for the entire Andrade clan.

“We’re not looking for knockout. We’re just looking to look good winning.” Paul Andrade said. He added, “We’d take a rematch with Chris Chatman in a minute and it wouldn’t be half as close.”

Demetrius has sported a plethora of interesting nicknames prior to his fights. He’s been known as “The Cape Verdean Assassin” and has even dressed like a firefighter coming to the ring while wearing corner jackets referring to him as “The Extinguisher”.

Friday night he’ll call himself “The U.S.S. Destroyer”.

“I want to show some support to the troops overseas helping make each day safe for us in the U.S.” said Demetrius.

And he plans to live up the latter part of that nickname and look good destroying on national TV.