By Jason Kim: WBC lightweight champion Edwin Valero (27-0, 27 KO’s) looked much improved in taking out Antonio DeMarco last Saturday night compared to his performance in December against Hector Velazquez. Most notably, Valero looked good on defense and was hit a lot less than he had in his last fight. But one has to wonder whether having a trainer like Freddie Roach would be able to make Valero even better. It’s hard to get better than 27-0, to be sure, but then again, Valero hasn’t faced any true elite fighters at this point in his career.

Those tests will likely come in this year, depending on whether his promoter wants to put Valero in with better opposition. However, if Valero is to have a better chance of being truly great, he’s going to need someone like Roach to make him even better and help iron out the weaknesses in Valero’s game. In looking at his fight against DeMarco, I noticed that Valero has a bad habit of keeping his chin too high.

DeMarco didn’t really capitalize on it because he was too busy taking shots all night long, but he was able to catch Valero with an occasional hook and jab, resulting in Valero’s head snapping back violently. Against a better opponent than DeMarco, like Juan Manuel Marquez, this could have been a problem. I think Roach could really help Valero with this.

I also noticed that Valero doesn’t throw a lot of jabs and doesn’t aim many of his punches to the body. He’s a pure head hunter and needs to set up some of his power shots better by throwing more jabs. You know what Valero is going to do at all times, because he’s just tossing one bomb after another and looking for a knockout. I also wonder about Valero’s stamina. He looked gassed as early as the 3rd round against DeMarco.

It wasn’t as if DeMarco was forcing him to fight hard by pressing him. Valero was setting the pace and initiating most of the action in the fight, yet he looked really tired early in the fight and had his mouth wide open trying to get air as he fought. Roach, and his conditioning coach, could really help Valero with his stamina.

I don’t know if Roach would want to train Valero or not, but I think it would be interesting to see if Roach could help him. One problem that I think could get in the way of Roach training Valero is that he doesn’t have a good command of the English language. Roach, as far as I know, doesn’t speak Spanish, and there would have to be an interpreter there to communicate what is being said by Roach to Valero and vice versa.