ESPN’s Got Barrera and Bernardo Osuna

Two names linked to boxing for decades are venturing into a new show called “Golpe a Golpe.”

Bernardo Osuna and Marco Antonio Barrera have been around the prizefighting world since the early 1990s yet are still in their mid-30s.

Osuna, 36, was last seen on a weekly boxing show on the Spanish language network Telefutura. He had amassed a large following in North America with his incredible knowledge of the machinations of the sport. The demise of that show, however, did not sink Osuna.

ESPN Deportes’s new show Golpe a Golpe and ESPN’s English language boxing show will share Osuna’s expertise in the prizefighting world.

For more than 15 years only the Spanish-speaking world was reaping Osuna’s knowledge and entertainment value; now the more dominant English-speaking world in North America will see what it was missing.

“His bilingual skills will be put to good use,” said Lino Garcia, general manager of ESPN Deportes.

Last week Osuna was featured on ESPN’s Friday Night Fights show. He will be rotating on the show with writer Dan Rafael and others.

Though still a young journalist, Osuna has been swimming in the prizefighting world since 1993 when he was an intern from Loyola Marymount University. He worked for Univision and covered boxing cards at the Inglewood Forum.

“I was always a boxing fan,” said Osuna, who grew up in the San Fernando Valley.

When an opening came for a Spanish speaking boxing analyst, he was ready.

“It really helped to be in the right place at the right time,” Osuna says.

While covering boxing cards at Inglewood he witnessed some of the greatest fights in Los Angeles and met numerous boxing stars that began their careers there.

“The Chiquita Gonzalez and Saman Sorjaturong fight was a tremendous fight,” said Osuna who reported on that world title fight that saw the Thai boxer take the world title from Mexico’s little giant in July 1995. “The other was the Marco Antonio Barrera fight with Kennedy McKinney. That was the other great fight I saw.”

That fight on Feb. 1996, launched the little-known Barrera into another stratosphere, as the Mexico City native has become one of the master boxers in the world. Now he will be sitting in as an analyst for the ESPN Deportes.

“Marco Antonio Barrera is very articulate,” said Osuna who has interviewed the three-weight division world champion many times in the past.

Barrera sees it as another opportunity to sell his sport.

“It’s very important for me to be able to talk about this beautiful sport,” said Barrera, 35, who just recently fought in Guadalajara last weekend. “I’ll be able to explain the different aspects of the sport from my perspective.”

Barrera has made it clear that he will continue fighting at least for the next year. No longer with Golden Boy Promotions, the former Mexico City native has also moved to another residence. Guadalajara is now his home base.

Currently he is healing from a severe cut on the forehead. A proposed match with Great Britain’s Amir Khan is in jeopardy, but not his seat in the television booth.

Both Barrera and Osuna are swimming toward other destinations at full speed.

“To be part of this sport on some scale puts me in a very nice place in the boxing community,” said Osuna.

Actually it’s the boxing audience that will benefit from two of the brightest boxing analysts on television in Barrera and Osuna.