Thomas Dulorme was supposed to spend this week completing preparation for his fight against Jamal James.
Dulorme was scheduled to meet James on Saturday night in Minneapolis for the WBA interim welterweight title. FOX planned to air the James-Dulorme match as the main event of a tripleheader from The Armory, where James has won four straight fights over the past two years in his hometown.
Instead, Dulorme wasted much of a training camp for an ill-fated fight for the second time in less than a year. Nine months before the COVID-19 pandemic delayed his championship match with James, an injured Rashidi Ellis withdrew from a fight against James a week before they were set to box on the Anthony Joshua-Andy Ruiz Jr. undercard June 1 at Madison Square Garden in New York.
“To do all that training, and then have to just stop like that, it’s a horrible feeling,” Dulorme told BoxingScene.com. “This is the only sport out there that the paycheck is not guaranteed. You can spend all this money on training camp, not cheat and do it the right way, and then you not only lose that money, you don’t get paid [for the fight]. With all the other sports, something like this happens and the athletes get paid. It’s very sad and frustrating for me.”
The 30-year-old Dulorme has remained in Indio, California, where he prepares at trainer Joel Diaz’s gym, since his fight was postponed 3½ weeks ago. Dulorme, a native Puerto Rican who resides in Las Vegas, hopes to start training again as soon as it is safe.
Whenever he gets the opportunity, Dulorme (25-3-1, 16 KOs) is looking forward to battling James (26-1, 12 KOs) for a vacant version of the WBA’s 147-pound championship. The Philippines’ Manny Pacquiao (62-7-2, 39 KOs) is the WBA’s “super” welterweight champion, but Dulorme nevertheless is inspired for his first title fight since Terence Crawford stopped him in the sixth round to win the then-vacant WBO junior welterweight title in April 2015.
“Jamal James is a really good fighter,” Dulorme said. “I think the fight will be exciting and action-packed. I just think that I’m on a different level than anyone Jamal James has fought before. But it’ll be a great fight for the fans.”
Yordenis Ugas is the only opponent who has beaten James, who lost a 10-round unanimous to Ugas in August 2016 at Turning Stone Resort Casino in Verona, New York. The Cuban contender later defeated Dulorme by 10-round unanimous decision, but Dulorme believes he did more than enough to beat Ugas (25-4, 12 KOs) on the Floyd Mayweather-Conor McGregor undercard in August 2017 at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas.
Dulorme also has drawn motivation from fighting James in his opponent’s hometown.
“I like the idea of going there, where I’ll fight in front of all of his fans,” Dulorme said. “When I get in the ring with him, they will see he’s not the star of the show.”
Keith Idec is a senior writer/columnist for BoxingScene.com. He can be reached on Twitter @Idecboxing.