Joseph Diaz vs. Jayson Velez in co-feature on Ward-Barrera on March 26

By Boxing News - 02/13/2016 - Comments

Image: Joseph Diaz vs. Jayson Velez in co-feature on Ward-Barrera on March 26By Dan Ambrose: The March 26th fight card headlined by Andre Ward vs. Sullivan Barrera will have unbeaten featherweight Joseph Diaz (19-0, 11 KOs) facing Jayson Velez (23-1-1, 16 KOs) in the co-feature bout on HBO at the Oracle Arena in Oakland, California.

It’s a decent fight. Velez was recently beaten by Ronny Rios last November by a 10 round unanimous decision on the Miguel Cotto vs. Saul “Canelo” Alvarez card at the Mandalay Bay Hotel & Casino Events Center in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Diaz, #13 WBC, has looked really good since turning pro in 2012 after fighting in the Olympics that year for the United States. Diaz has dominated most of his 19 opponents during his four year pro career.

The one fighter that gave him problems was Rene Alvarado, who Diaz struggled at times against last July in the process of beating him by a 10 round decision.
“Done deal: 126 @JosephDiazJr vs Jayson Velez March 26 in #Ward-Barrera co-feature on HBO Boxing. @OscarDeLaHoya @GoldenBoyBoxing,” said Dan Rafael on his Twitter.

Velez, 27, looked really good in his first 21 fights of his career, but the wheels started coming off when he fought IBF featherweight champion Evgeny Gradovich in November 2014 and was given a 12 round draw despite the fact that Gradovich appeared to win the fight by a considerable margin. That was a terrible decision by the judges. But less important than the decision was the fact that Velez looked so terrible in that fight.

It was clear from watching it that Velez isn’t even as good as Gradovich, who has now been exposed by Lee Selby, Aldimar Silva Santos and Jesus Galicia in his last three fights. Selby beat Gradovich. The other fighters came up short, but they almost beat Gradovich too, and that tells you what level Gradovich is and what level Velez is at.

I would have preferred to see the 23-year-old Joseph Diaz fight someone a lot better than Velez. There’s some good contenders in the featherweight division that would have been much better opponents for Diaz than Velez. I’d like to have seen someone like Oscar Valdez, Ronny Rios, Abner Mares, Josh Warrington or Robinson Castellanos. Those guys would have been great. Velez isn’t even ranked in the top 15 any longer after his loss to Rios. Velez doesn’t rate anymore in my view because he looked so poor against Gradovich and Rios.

Boxing fans will tune in to see the Ward vs. Barrera fight card for the main event. The co-feature obviously will be of less importance than the main event, but it would have still been nice to see Diaz fight a quality contender rather than a guy that was just beaten.



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