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The hope was to have already challenged for a junior lightweight title by this point, or so Oscar Valdez thought his year would play out back in January.
Obviously, everyone has been forced to make due with the mess that 2020 has offered the world. Rather than heading to a straight-away shot at reigning 130-pound titlist Miguel Berchelt instead has come separate ESPN headliners for both after having to wait for the sport to resume amidst the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.
Berchelt (38-1, 34KOs) had his stay busy bout, stopping Eleazer Valenzuela in the 6th round of their non-title fight on June 27 in Mexico City. Valdez’s turn comes Tuesday, as the 29-year old from Nogales, Sonora, Mexico faces Puerto Rico’s Jayson Velez (29-6-1, 22KOs) live on ESPN from a crowdless MGM Grand Conference Center in Las Vegas.
“I’ve been wanting to fight for the longest,” Valdez (27-0, 21KOs) told BoxingScene.com. “It was boring without sports for these past few months, and I’m grateful to fight for a promoter (Top Rank) who found a way to get all of us get back in the ring. I feel blessed to step back in the ring.”
The bout will serve as the second at junior lightweight for Valdez, who moved up in weight last November after having made six successful featherweight title defenses over the course of a three-year reign. It will also mark his fourth straight fight with 2019 Trainer of the Year Eddy Reynoso, with whom he joined forces late in 2018.
Normally training out of Reynoso’s stateside training facility in San Diego, the team instead did the bulk of the work south of the border as it became more difficult to travel due to the ongoing global health crisis.
“I was in San Diego at the start of the pandemic, and then headed home to Sonora,” Valdez recalled. “Eddy was in Guadalajara at the time, so we decided it would be safer and easier to just train there. Other than the location, nothing has been too different or unusual. For me, training camp is just going to the gym and staying home, so the pandemic didn’t really change that process.”
The only thing that has changed is the timeline for when Valdez and Berchelt get to lock horns. Of course, there is still the matter of getting through Tuesday’s bout both victorious and unscathed.
“When this year first began, yeah all I was thinking about was going after Berchelt and bringing home that WBC title, the one I’ve always dreamed of holding since I was a little kid,” admits Valdez. “But that part has changed.
“For right now, the only thing I’m thinking about is beating Jayson Velez on July 21. That’s what we’ve spent this entire training camp working on.”
Jake Donovan is a senior writer for BoxingScene.com. Twitter: @JakeNDaBox