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It’s been a long 1,841 days for Jeison Rosario.
That’s five years and two weeks, to be specific, that have passed since the Dominican-born slugger, then 24, had a career watershed with a shocking knockout of Julian Williams before “J-Rock’s” hometown fans in Philadelphia.
The upset earned Rosario the IBF title belt at 154 pounds, but to say it’s been a struggle since is a super welterweight-sized understatement.
He’d experienced myriad traumas – losing his belt by KO and being stopped three other times in the ring, and battling depression outside of it – even before a one-sided loss to Jesus Ramos in Saturday’s PPV opener that definitively signaled the end of the line.
Now a shopworn 29, Rosario offered no substantive resistance through six rounds, went face-first to the mat from a combo in the seventh, and was on the wrong end of a six-punch volley in the eighth that prompted referee Robert Hoyle to intervene at 2:18.
“Yes, he’s been through hell outside the ring,” Ranallo said, “but you wonder how much fight is left inside the body of Jeison Rosario.”
Analyst Abner Mares, a former three-division champion himself, agreed.
“As a friend,” he said, “I would tell him that it’s time to hang them up.”
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