According to The Ring, World Boxing Council (WBC) lightweight champion Edwin Valero (25-0, 25 KOs) is reportedly nearing completion of an agreement to fight number #4 ranked #WBO lightweight contender Breidis Prescott (21-0, 18 KOs) on July 25th in Mexico. On the same card with be undefeated light middleweight contender Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. (39-0-1, 29 KOs) against a still to be determined opponent.
If the Valero-Prescott bout does take place, you may be seeing Valero lose for the first time because he doesn’t look nearly as good Prescott from what I’ve seen of him.
Valero, 27, recently defeated 39-year-old Antonio Pitalua in a 2nd round TKO on April 4th in Austin, Texas. Valero looked like nothing special in the first round, and fought standing straight up, showing poor hand speed and equally bad defense. There was little action in the round to speak of with Pitalua landing the better shots. In the 2nd, Valero caught Pitalua with a right hook at the start of the round and put him down.
It wasn’t a huge shot, but instead one that Pitalua wasn’t expecting. However, the 39-year-old was badly hurt after he got up and was hardly in the condition to defend himself from any punches. Valero, not to let the opportunity got to waste, jumped immediately all over Pitalua, landing a flurry of shots to put 40ish Pitalua down for the count.
It wasn’t an impressive win, however, because of Pitalua’s advanced age and how because of how average Valero looked in the opening round. The punch that hurt Pitalua, like I said, wasn’t that big of a shot. He just didn’t see it coming at him.
Sad to say, Pitalua is probably Valero’s best opponent during his entire seven year pro career, with many of them being C-class fighters. Although Valero is hyped badly because of his 25 wins with 25 knockouts, his record would likely be duplicated by many other lightweights in the division if they had been fortunate to face the same lower level fighters that Valero has built his highly inflated record on.
It’s sad, because many of the more gullible, unknowing boxing fans see his record and consider it prove that Valero is perhaps the top guy in the lightweight division, when in reality he may not even be as good as some of the bottom 10 fighters like Urban Antillon.
Prescott, 25, from Colombia, shocked the boxing world by knocking out overhyped British lightweight Amir Khan in the 1st round in September 2008. Prescott nearly decapitated Khan with a huge left hook that sent Khan down moments into the fight.
Prescott would drop Khan again with another huge left hook to the head, causing the fight to be stopped at 0:54 of the 1st round. Prescott hasn’t had much interest from Khan in a rematch, and that’s understandable given how badly Prescott beat him.
Most recently, Prescott defeated Humberto Toledo by a 10th round disqualification in February. Although Prescott didn’t get the knockout, he landed devastating shots for 10 rounds and it’s credit to Toledo’s solid chin that he was able to take the shots.
I see Prescott as being a much better fighter than Valero. Prescott is a much more powerful puncher, has fought better fighters and is a lot bigger than the small 5’6” Valero compared to the 5’11” Prescott. Honestly, this is going to be a huge mismatch by the time it’s over, and unless Valero’s promoter steps in to stop the fight from going forward, I see Prescott knocking Valero out within three or four rounds. Believe me, Prescott is the real deal.
