Although the WBA featherweight title fight between Nick Ball and Brandon Figueroa matches a “Wrecking Ball” with a “Heartbreaker”, neither man was in the mood to upset the order of things at this afternoon’s press conference in Liverpool.
With both still to make weight ahead of Saturday’s fight, there was a pensiveness and impatience evident in the eyes and speech of Ball and Figueroa for as long as they sat at the top table. It was clear from the outset that neither man was remotely interested in talking and that all they wanted to do was now get in the ring and fight.
“I’m definitely not overlooking him,” said Ball, the WBA featherweight champion who will on Saturday again be looking up at his next challenger. (Ball stands at only 5 '2, whereas Figueroa is all of 5' 9.) “In terms of it being a tall order, that’s good, that’s where I’m comfortable. I’ve been doing this all my life. It’s nothing new to me. The taller they are, the harder they fall. It’s a bigger target, a bigger body, a bigger thing to hit.”
As well as being tall for the weight, Figueroa, 26-2-1 (19 KOs), is also decent. In his 11-year professional career he has been beaten only twice – both by the same man, Stephen Fulton – and is yet to be stopped. In addition, the fighter from Weslaco, Texas is a former WBC champion at super-bantamweight and the one-time holder of the WBC “interim” title at featherweight.
“I guess we’ll see Saturday night,” he said in response to Ball, 23-0-1 (13 KOs). “They all say the same thing and it never works out the way they want it to. On Saturday night we’ll see if he can back up all the talk. I’m not really one to talk, but on Saturday night we’ll find out who is the better man. I’m confident in my game plan and my team and my preparation. I just can’t wait for Saturday.”
It was at that point Ball, the champion, was reminded of the fact that Figueroa, his next challenger, had somehow managed to throw in excess of a thousand punches in his last fight: a 12-round win against Joet Gonzalez. Ball then greeted this reminder with a shrug.
“He’s going to try and do what he wants, but whether I’m going to let him is a different story,” said the man from Liverpool, who has so far beaten Ronny Rios, TJ Doheny and Sam Goodman in title defences. “He threw over a thousand punches in his last fight against someone who is not me. So I don’t really take too much from it. It’s what’s coming back at you that you have to worry about.
“It can go early, or it can go late. But it will end in a win for Nick Ball.”
In between losing two fights against Fulton, Figueroa conquered the likes of Carlos Castro, Mark Magsayo, and Jessie Magdaleno as a featherweight. Perhaps his best win, however, came at super-bantamweight, where he stopped the then-unbeaten Luis Nery in seven rounds to lift the WBC title. That win, he says, will provide plenty of inspiration ahead of Saturday’s fight against Ball, with the two situations not all that dissimilar.
“I feel like I can do it all,” said Figueora. “Everybody underestimated me for that fight [against Luis Nery]. I was the big underdog and Luis Nery was knocking out everyone until he faced me. You saw what happened that night. I just stayed quiet, stuck to my game plan, and came out of it with the belt.”
As with Ball, there is a quiet, low-key air to Figueroa, dressed for this afternoon’s press conference like a young Vito Corleone in The Godfather Part II. He knows just as Ball knows that there is really no need to waste energy talking ahead of a fight; not when the aim is to throw over a thousand punches in said fight. In fact, given the styles of both men, and their output in the ring, we were perhaps fortunate to hear them say anything in the name of “selling” something that doesn’t need to be sold.
