Throw a lot of punches and good things happen.
Emanuel Navarrete is the poster boy for that approach to boxing. The 140-pound titleholder threw 1,038 punches and more than enough of them landed to beat Oscar Valdez decisively in an entertaining scrap Saturday at Desert Diamond Arena outside Phoenix.
The official scores were 119-109, 118-110 and 116-112. Boxing Junkie scored it 117-111 for Navarrete, nine rounds to three.
The lopsided scoring doesn’t reflect the intensity of the fight, which was compared in the lead-up to such all-Mexican matchups as Marco Antonio Barrera vs. Erik Morales.
VALDEZ IS HURT EARLY 🫨#NavarreteValdez | @ESPN pic.twitter.com/u1sqGz7aqO
— Top Rank Boxing (@trboxing) August 13, 2023
This bout didn’t live up to the Barrera-Morales standard in their trilogy — few do — but it was fun to watch.
Navarrete (38-1, 31 KOs) did what he always does, throw a lot of punches from crazy angles to both the head and body for almost the entire fight. He misses a lot of his shots but he generally outlands his opponents, as he did Saturday.
According to CompuBox, Navarrete was 216 of 1,038 (21%) while Valdez was 140 of 436 (32%).
And, underscoring his toughness, the winner didn’t stop throwing punches even thought he injured his right (power) hand sometime in the middle of the fight.
Meanwhile, while Valdez was outworked, the numbers indicate that he punched more accurately. He also landed many of the biggest shots in the fight, which made the fight competitive even though he couldn’t connect enough to win more than a few rounds.
Valdez also fought the last several rounds with a right eye that was swollen shut, which is a daunting handicap given Navarrete’s offensive capabilities.
In the end, Navarrete, a three-division champion, successfully defended his title and won his 33rd consecutive fight. Valdez gave an admirable effort. And the fans got their money’s worth.
Rematch? The one-sided result doesn’t call for one. And Navarrete, the WBO beltholder, has other good options, most notably the three other titleholders — Joseph Cordina (IBF), Hector Luis Garcia (WBA) and O’Shaquie Foster (WBC).
However, he’s open to a second meeting with his Mexican rival
“I’ll leave it in the hands of the fans,” he said through a translator. “They’re ultimately the best judges. If they want to see this fight again, I know they’ll … push for it.”
Meanwhile, Valdez (31-2, 23 KOs) was devastated after the fight.
The former two-division titleholder has now lost two of his last three fights, including a one-sided setback against Shakur Stevenson in a title-unification bout in April of last year. He’ll have to work hard if he hopes to reclaim what he has lost.
However, he was more concerned about those who were rooting for him on Saturday.
“He’s just a warrior,” Valdez said of Navarrete. “I tried my best. That’s all I can say. … I’m sorry I disappointed everybody who came here to support me. I feel terrible. I’m hoping to do it again.”
No one outside of Valdez’s inner circle was all that disappointed, which is why they wouldn’t mind seeing him and Navarrete do it again.
In other featured fights, unbeaten 140-pound contender Lindolfo Delgado (18-0, 13 KOs) outpointed Jair Valtierra (16-3, 8 KOs) 99-91, 99-91 and 98-92 in a 10-round battle of Mexicans.
And Olympic silver medalist Richard Torrez Jr. (6-0, 6 KOs) stopped Willie Jake Jr. (11-4-2, 3 KOs) in the first round of a scheduled six-round heavyweight fight.
