By Sean McDaniel: Tonight’s lightweight title bout between World Boxing Council lightweight champion Edwin Valero (26-0, 26 KO’s) and WBC lightweight interim champion Antonio DeMarco (23-1-1, 17 KO’s) is sure to have fireworks for as long as it lasts at the Arena Monterrey, Monterrey, Nuevo León, Mexico. For Valero, 28, this is going to be his first exposure to many boxing fans. Before tonight, most fans only chances to get a glimpse of the knockout artist Valero was on Youtube where there are a number of Valero’s many 1st round knockout fights.

Valero will be facing the 24-year-old DeMarco, a fighter that is fairly well known to U.S. fans because his fights are often shown on Showtime. If you ask many of those same fans who will be winning tonight’s fight between DeMarco and Valero, many of them will answer with DeMarco. You can’t blame them, really, because few of them have seen any footage of Valero fighting, and the grainy video on Youtube doesn’t really do justice to how hard Valero really punches.

To look at Valero’s fights at a quick glance, he looks sloppy, wide open defensively, slow and not particularly skilled. However, Valero makes up for his lack of skills by having a ton of power in both hands. What makes Valero even more dangerous is the heavy pressure he puts on his opponents and his southpaw stance. Valero doesn’t let up for an instance on his opponent, basically smothering them and bombing them out with huge shots. Valero is also one of those rare types of fighters that have almost equal knockout power in either hand. You can’t just focus on Valero’s left hand, because his right hand is just as powerful and dangerous. Valero got off to a quick start in his eight-year pro career, stopping his first 18 opponents in the 1st round.

That’s a pretty incredible number when you think about, and although most of those fighters were 2nd and 3rd tier fighters, it still is quite an accomplishment to knockout that many fighters in the 1st round. It shows that Valero has big power. Since then, Valero has had to work harder for his knockouts, stopping some in them in the 7th, 8th and 10th rounds. He’s still knocking them all out, but having to work harder to get the knockouts because his opponents are moving more and have better chins than his first 18 bouts of his career.

Valero will be facing the tall 5’10” DeMarco, who will be fighting in his home country of Mexico tonight. It’s hard to know whether that will be advantage or a problem for DeMarco, as Mexican fans like to see a lot of action and they may encourage DeMarco to slug with Valero by giving the Mexican DeMarco a lot of applause when he tries to trade.

The last thing that DeMarco should be trying to do, though, is trade with the more powerful Valero, because he hits too hard to take any chances against. DeMarco has looked really good of late, stopping Jose Alfaro in the 10th round in October 2009. DeMarco also took out the tough Almazbek Raiymkulov last year in a 9th round stoppage in February. If there is any criticism to direct at DeMarco, it’s his tendency to slug too often with his opponents. DeMarco gets hit a lot in his fights. Up until now, it hasn’t mattered much, because DeMarco’s excellent power has always been enough for him to control his fights and get the wins.

However, if DeMarco uses that same brawling style against Valero tonight, he could be asking for trouble. Valero is the better slugger of the two by far, so if DeMarco fights his fight, he could end up becoming Valero’s 27th knockout victim.

DeMarco has a chance to win, though, because Valero’s chin is suspect, and he leaves himself wide open when he attacks. If DeMarco can knock Valero two or three times, he may be able to build up a big enough lead to win the fight on points. I can’t see DeMarco stopping Valero, because he seems to have fast recovery times.

Ultimately, I think this fight will last only as long as DeMarco tries to box Valero. Once he commits to slugging with him for any stretch of time, Valero will batter DeMarco into submission.
Prediction: Valero by 6th round TKO