After watching on a monitor in his dressing room as Michael Dokes battered John L. Gardner, Greg Page (15-0, 14 KOs) knows he needs an equally impressive performance against Alfredo Evangelista to keep his place in the hierarchy of young heavyweights.
Evangelista, best known for his rather unthreatening title challenges to Muhammad Ali (L15) and Larry Holmes (TKO by 7), is fighting in the U.S. for the first time since getting knocked out in the fifth by Leon Spinks in January, 1980. That fight, in which Evangelista badly hurt Spinks in the second, started the former world champion on a 3-0-1 run that was enough to land him a shot at Holmes.
The 26-year-old Evangelista, meanwhile, returned home to Spain and has gone 8-0-1 against a series of novices and non-entities, inflating his record to 40-5-3 with 29 KOs.
Page, who began training under Dundee less than a month ago, weighed in at 230 pounds, while Evangelista scaled a rather fleshy 224.