NEW YORK – Edgar Berlanga is well aware of his critics, what they have said and written about him since he was knocked down during a subpar performance five months ago in Las Vegas.

Brooklyn’s Berlanga realizes, though, that detractors don’t dictate what happens next for the undefeated super middleweight. The 24-year-old knockout artist went from hot to not despite that he defeated Marcelo Coceres by unanimous decision on the Tyson Fury-Deontay Wilder undercard, yet he knows it is up to him, and only him, to determine how his career takes shape in 2022.

That process is set to begin Saturday night, when Berlanga (18-0, 16 KOs) is scheduled to meet Toronto’s Steve Rolls (21-1, 12 KOs) in a 10-round main event ESPN will televise from Madison Square Garden’s Hulu Theater (10 p.m. ET; 7 p.m. PT).

“Listen, man, I’ve got something to prove to myself,” Berlanga told BoxingScene.com. “I don’t got nothing to prove to none of the critics out there or people that have just been bad-mouthing me. It’s cool. I don’t got nothing to prove to them. I’ve got something to prove to myself. You know, I just wanna go in there and do what I do. And I know what I could do. I’ve been doing it the whole camp [in Las Vegas], just using my skills and just using my boxing IQ, just being Edgar. That’s all it comes down to.”

Admittedly failing to show any of those traits against Coceres (30-3-1, 16 KOs) bothers Berlanga.

When he suffered a torn left biceps in the third round, he focused only on trying to knock out the Argentinean veteran, rather than using his boxing skills and intelligence to make matters easier on himself. Berlanga lost focus at times, too, which led to him abandoning defense and taking unnecessary flush right hands he could’ve avoided had he been more mindful of Coceres’ capabilities.

“To be honest, I hated the performance,” said Berlanga, who needed nearly three months to recover from surgery to repair his torn left biceps. “I made a lot of mistakes. I’ve watched the tape over and over and over and over, and I just made so many mistakes. I don’t wanna use the arm [injury] as, ‘Oh, I did all these mistakes because my arm was sore.’ That had nothing to do with it because I coulda switched up quick, you know, but I didn’t.

“I kept trying to go out there and knock the guy out, instead of switching it up and just lightly using my jab or using my feet more or using my head. You know what I’m saying? Or using angles and stuff. Going down to the body – there’s a lot of different things I coulda did. That didn’t have nothing to do with my arm. Like I said, I’m young and it’s a steppingstone for me. And I’m glad everything happened the way it did.”

Berlanga beat Coceres by the same score on each judge’s card, 96-93. He also went the distance in a second straight fight after knocking out each of his first 16 pro opponents in the first round.

The confident contender hopes to show the skills he has long discussed during his fight with the 37-year-old Rolls, who has lost only by fourth-round knockout to middleweight champion Gennadiy Golovkin (41-1-1, 36 KOs).

“I got a lot of skills, man,” Berlanga said. “I’ve got good movement and I know that I’m an all-around fighter. I could do everything. So, for me to just go in there like a madman – I’m not gonna lie, I was trying to knock him out, only to prove a point. And I feel like by me doing that, I didn’t get the job done the way I wanted to.”

Keith Idec is a senior writer/columnist for BoxingScene.com. He can be reached on Twitter @Idecboxing.