By Dan Ambrose: WBA light welterweight champion Jessie Vargas (25-0, 9 KOs) will be looking to impress this Saturday night on the HBO pay-per-view card against Antonio DeMarco (31-3-1, 23 KOs) at the Cotai Arena, Venetian Resort, Macao, in Macao S.A.R., China.

Vargas’ new trainer Roy Jones Jr will be working his corner for the fight. Jones Jr has supposedly taught Vargas how to throw a left hook with power, and to sit down on his other punches as well.

Vargas, never much of a puncher, feels that the things that Jones Jr has taught him has helped him in his power department, and he wants to show boxing fans his new power. Whether Vargas is actually punching with more power or not remains to be seen.

For his sake, you’ve got to hope that he’s found some additional power because his lack of power hurt him in his recent title defense against Anton Novikov last August, and in his fight against former World Boxing Association 140 champ Khabib Allakhverdiev.

Vargas, a Top Rank fighter, appeared to lose both of those fights, but he was still given the wins. There’s a lot of boxing fans who feel that Vargas is an illegitimate champion at the moment. What makes it even more disturbing is Vargas could get a career payday against Pacquiao in 2015 if he beats DeMarco and perhaps one other fighter.

The DeMarco fight isn’t a big enough name for boxing fans to forget Vargas’ two controversial wins. Bob Arum of Top Rank is going to need to pick out a better fighter than DeMarco for Vargas’ next fight if he wants boxing fans to get excited about him fighting Pacquiao.

DeMarco used to be a decent fighter until he was taken apart by Adrien Broner two years ago in 2012. Since then, DeMarco has been matched against weak 2nd and 3rd tier opposition, and he’s not looked good in any of his fights.

DeMarco pretty much is getting the fight against Vargas based on him being a former world champion rather than for what he’s done with his career since his loss to Broner.

You can make a strong argument that DeMarco has done zero to deserve a world title shot unless you count beating weak opposition as something that makes him deserving.