By Jeff Aranow: Scott Quigg isn’t troubled at the oddsmakers installing him as the underdog for his fight with WBO featherweight champion Oscar Valdez (23-0, 19 KOs) on March 10. Quigg (34-1-2, 25 KOs) says he’s coming to California to take Valdez’s WBO title from him in 2 months from at the StubHub Center in Carson, California.
The Valdez-Quigg fight will be televised live on ESPN. There should be a big audience for the fight, as it’s going to be televised after an important basketball game. A lot of the casual boxing fans will stick around to watch the Valdez vs. Quigg fight, as long as the undercard is an interesting one.
WBO super bantamweight champion Jessie Magdaleno will be defending his title against an opponent still to be determined. It’s supposed to be a voluntary defense for Magdaleno, which could be bad news if the fight is a mismatch. The promoters for Magdaleno, Top Rank, would do well if they matched him against a quality opponent rather than feeding him a low level fighter.
“What the bookies think doesn’t mean anything at all to me,” said Quigg to thesun.co.uk. ”I’ll be in California to take his title and I’ll prove to everyone that I still have the desire and ability to become a two weight world champion.”
Quigg’s trainer Freddie Roach will come up with a great game plan for him to defeat Valdez. Roach is good at studying different fighters and coming up with excellent game plans for his fighters to win. It’s easy to see what works against Valdez. He has problems dealing with pressure.
Valdez had his biggest problems in his last 2 fights against Miguel Marriaga and Genesis Servania. Marriaga slugged with Valdez, and he wound up hurting him late. Valdez out-slugged Marriaga to get the win. Marriaga exposed chinks in Valdez’s armor with the big shots that he was landing. Valdez was hurt twice in the later rounds by Marriaga.
Quigg needs to expect that Valdez will box him, because he’s not going to want to turn the fight into a brawl after the problems he had in his last 2 fights against Marriaga and Servania.
Quigg has the punching power and the technical skills to beat Valdez. The question is whether he can KO Valdez. That might be Quigg’s best bet in winning the fight. Quigg, 29, is coming from far away to take the fight with Valdez. The lead promoter for the fight is Top Rank, the promoters for Valdez. That puts Quigg in a position where he’s going to need to put a lot of heat on the 27-year-old Valdez from start to finish.
Quigg’s only defeat of his career came against Carl Frampton in 2016. He lost a 12 round split decision. Quigg was at his best in second half of that fight when he put a massive amount of pressure on Frampton and finished the fight in a commanding way. The judges were more impressed with what Frampton did in the first six rounds than what Quigg did in the second half of the fight. There’s only one way that Quigg can fight and that’s when he’s putting pressure on his opponents. Quigg isn’t at his best when he’s boxing, as he plays to the strengths of his opponents when he does that.