Jalil Hackett was calling out welterweight titleholder Brian Norman Jnr before his most recent fight. Then Hackett lost, and his defeat serves as a lesson to never overlook any opponent.

Hackett now aims to avenge that lone career defeat against Jose Roman on Saturday at the Caribe Royale Casino in Orlando, Florida.

Hackett, a 21-year-old welterweight who fights out of Washington, D.C., checks all the boxes of a young star: good amateur pedigree, 77 percent knockout ratio and a handful of engaging quotes at press conferences. The thing that has been missing is activity. Then Hackett lost to Roman in December.

“I take that as the lesson learned,” Bernard Hackett, Jalil’s father and trainer, told BoxingScene. “You have to finish the job the way you are being anticipated to, because part of being at the top of the game is you have to live up to expectations. Mike Tyson delivered every night all the way up until he won the heavyweight title. Then he did a young-people thing and started getting off of what made him great. I think that is the same thing that, in retrospect, happened with us.

“The anticipation is to see something dominant. The people who pay for tickets, the people who pay to see it live or are watching it on TV and the promoters who put their money behind your fighters, they anticipate seeing – dominance.”

At the same time, Bernard also believes his son won the fight. The judges disagreed, scoring the fight for Roman via a split decision. Bernard still considers Jalil, 9-1 (7 KOs), to be the superior fighter – though he admits his son could have done more to make that case to the officials.

“Even if we got the win and they thought it was a good enough fight to make a rematch, we would have taken the rematch with him,” Bernard said. “Some of the things, I attribute to Jalil just being young. In the sense of, at times, young people don't follow the script. In the sense of, there's coaches whose job it is to come up with a game plan. There are coaches whose job it is to get you prepared for the fight. If you do what you're supposed to do with them and everybody does their job, you come out good.”

Roman, 14-1 (6 KOs), is a 31-year-old Puerto Rican fighter who has won three straight fights since suffering his only professional loss, against Cesar Francis in 2021. A second win over Hackett would make Roman a notable name in the division, making Saturday’s rematch something of a crossroads fight for both men.

“When you're young, you can get comfortable or lackadaisical instead of training,” Bernard said of Jalil. “He went through the process of training, as opposed to training to improve something. I think that Jalill wanted to put himself in a position where he could fast-track his career. When you do that, you have to live up to the expectations that people want to see against the fighters they put in front of you. I'll say this: I think, in some ways, they didn't give Jose Roman enough credit.  I say that because he was a decorated amateur. He wasn't a cab driver, like the expression some people like to use about fighters. He was a very quality guy. I think they didn't give him enough credit.”

One thing you won’t hear from Bernard is that his son, Jalil, who appeared gaunt at the press conference and weigh-in, was affected by making weight.

“I am not going to let that be an excuse,” Bernard said. “The weight cut didn't play a factor, because if you watch the fight, Jalil pressed the action for the entire 10 rounds. I just say that we hit a bump in the road and I think that Roman overperformed and we underperformed.”

When asked what could be improved upon, Bernard was straightforward.

“To be honest with you, I think we won the last fight,” Bernard said. “I would tell anybody, if we watched that fight with no sound – just watching the fight – Jalil clearly won the fight. For me, it's just going back in there and finishing the job.”

Lucas Ketelle is the author of “Inside the Ropes of Boxing,” a guide for young fighters, a writer for BoxingScene and a member of the Boxing Writers Association of America. Find him on X at @BigDogLukie.