By Dan Ambrose: If Top Rank promoter Bob Arum is interested in putting a fight together, he might consider matching his unbeaten lightweight contender Felix Verdejo (18-0, 13 KOs) against former WBA featherweight champion Nicholas Walters (26-0, 21 KOs), because Verdejo is interested in the fight if they can work out the weight.
Actually there’s not much to work out in the weight department. Walters, 29, out-weighed lightweight Verdejo last Saturday night after both fighters weighed-in before their respective fights.
Verdejo, who fights at 135, rehydrated to 144lbs for his fight against Ivan Najera (16-1, 8 KOs), whereas Walters missed the featherweight limit at 126 and rehydrated to 145lbs. In other words, Walters should be fighting at lightweight like Verdejo does instead of melting down to fight featherweights and then enjoy a huge weight advantage over them after he rehydrates into the 140s.
“It could happen,” Verdejo said to esnewsreporting about him fighting Walters. “If he comes up to 130, and I go down to 130. It could happen.”
I think Arum might be interested in one day matching Walters and Verdejo together. It’s a fight that they can make without an actual catch-weight due to Walters being the same weight as Verdejo. The only difference is Verdejo is a little taller at 5’9” compared to the 5’7” Walters, and he’s got faster hands speed and better power.
Walters is the busier fighter of the two, but it’s unclear if he could get away with being busy against a guy with Verdejo’s punching power.
Verdejo looked good at times in beating Najera by a 10 round unanimous decision. He knocked Najera down twice in the fight, and showed excellent power and speed. The areas where Verdejo didn’t look good was with his defense, and his composure in handling the pressure that was being put on him by Najera.
Verdejo looked worried at times, and his constant movement when being pressured seemed odd given his huge power advantage. The 5’6” Najera was the heavier guy in the fight at 147 pounds, but he was giving away three inches in height and an inch and a half in reach.
Verdejo should have been able to walk Najera down and blast him out with his big power, but instead we frequently saw Verdejo running around the ring trying to escape the pressure that was being put on him. Verdejo won the fight by the scores of 100-88, 100-88 and 99-89. You have to wonder whether Verdejo would have been able to do the same thing against a fighter like Walters if he’d been in the ring with him.
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