Oscar Valdez vs. Scott Quigg signed for Mar.10

By Boxing News - 01/13/2018 - Comments

Image: Oscar Valdez vs. Scott Quigg signed for Mar.10

By Chris Williams: Scott Quigg (34-1-2, 25 KOs) is reporting that his fight against WBO featherweight champion Oscar Valdez (23-0, 19 KOs) is signed for their March 10 fight on ESPN at the StubHub Center in Carson, California.

Valdez has looked fragile and beatable in his last 2 fights against Miguel Marriaga and Genesis Servania. Valdez went life and death with both of those guys. All that hype that Valdez had in the last few years is now proving to be a mirage. Top Rank has a good fighter in 27-year-old, but not the guy that boxing fans thought he was.

Quigg has a very good chance of finishing the job hat Marriaga and Servania started. The way that Valdez looked against two very average fighters suggests that he’s not going to be the start that Top Rank thought he was going to be when he turned pro in 2012.

Quigg, 29, has to do a lot more in the first 6 to 8 rounds against Valdez than he did in his 12 round split decision loss to Carl Frampton 2 years ago on February 27 in Manchester, England. Quigg could have won that fight if he didn’t fight so passively in the first three-fourths of the fight. When Quigg finally did open up with his offense, he had Frampton on the run and looking tired.

”It’s all signed. I’ll be fighting Oscar Valdez for the WBO featherweight World championship on March 10th@StubHubCenter #ValdezQuigg #andthenew,” said Quigg on his Twitter.

Top Rank has made this fight thinking that Valdez has the goods to win. It’s a match-up that is coming at a bad time for Valdez. The brass at Top Rank might not have been paying attention to Valdez’s last 2 fights, because that’s the only reason why I could see them making a crazy fight like that. In watching Valdez’s last 2 fights, it’s clear to me that he’s deteriorating quickly and getting worse.

Putting Valdez with a dangerous puncher like Quigg would have been a brilliant – but still risky – move by Top Rank if they’d done it in early 2017 before he fought Marriaga and was hurt by him. Valdez looked great when he was blasting apart Matias Carlos Adrian Rueda, Evgeny Gradovich, and Hiroshige Osawa. I remember seeing those fights and thinking that Valdez looks to have the goods to be a superstar. But I don’t think that anymore since watching him get staggered and dropped in his last fight against the non-punching Servania.

I didn’t pay too much attention when Valdez was badly hurt by Marriaga last April. I figured that anyone can be hurt by a big puncher like Marriaga. It was one of those things that any fighter could experience in facing a slugger like Marriaga. I could no longer ignore Valdez’s chin problems when he was hurt by Servania and knocked down. That fight showed that there’s something wrong with Valdez’s punch resistance. He’s not taking the shots that once did. The punches are bothering him now, and he’s getting hurt.

Quigg is looking really good right now with him having learned from his loss to Frampton, and he’s won his last 3 fights against Jose Cayetano, Viorel Simion and Oleg Yefimovych. Quigg is performing better than Valdez. He’s looking a lot better than him, and Top Rank could be sorry they made the fight. I’d be interesting to know who at Top Rank had the great idea to let Valdez face a puncher like Quigg after the way he looked against Marriaga and Servania. I hope it’s not Arum that made the decision, but that doesn’t sound like him. Arum is usually careful when matching his star fighters against non-Top Rank guys. This doesn’t look like an Arum move.