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Miguel Berchelt and Oscar Valdez exchange punches during their fight for the WBC super featherweight title at the MGM Grand Conference Center on February 20, 2021 in Las Vegas, Nevada. (Photo by Mikey Williams/Top Rank Inc via Getty Images)
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Miguel Berchelt and Oscar Valdez exchange punches during their fight for the WBC super featherweight title at the MGM Grand Conference Center on February 20, 2021 in Las Vegas, Nevada. (Photo by Mikey Williams/Top Rank Inc via Getty Images)
Boxing displayed its rare ability to inspire and terrify, sometimes within the same round, on Saturday night.
Oscar Valdez was in the middle of a brilliant deconstruction of Miguel Berchelt, the favored WBC super-featherweight champion. Then, as the bell was just beginning to toll at the end of the 10th round, Berchelt missed a lunging right and Valdez pounded him in the middle of the face with a left hook from boxing hell.
Berchelt was out cold before he hit the floor, and Valdez, now 29-0, was the new champ. It was his 23rd knockout and was built carefully from the ground floor by Valdez and trainer Eddy Reynoso.
“I thought Berchelt would bring out the best in me,” Valdez said. “I can also box, I can do a lot of things. It wasn’t a toe to toe fight and I had to box a little more. But like I told my opponents, be careful if you’re looking for the knockout. You might find one yourself.”
But it was difficult to analyze everything when one saw Berchelt motionless on the canvas for at least a minute and a half. After he sat up and regained his senses, he was strapped onto a gurney and shoved into the back of an ambulance.
It was Valdez’ third knockdown of the fight. In between Rounds 9 and 10, referee Russell Mora told Berchelt’s corner that he needed to see some competitiveness if he was going to prolong the fight. Valdez rocked Berchelt repeatedly during the round, and even though the champ was technically not defenseless, his legs were collapsing and his gait was unsteady. A stoppage would have been quite in line with boxing’s standards, as well as humanity’s.
Berchelt is now 38-2 overall and 7-1 in title shots. He has taken massive punishment before, as in the victory over Francisco Vargas that he used to win the title in 2017, but Valdez was too strategic and measured to let him escape.
“I want to thank all the people who said I couldn’t do it, because they’re part of this, too,” Valdez said.
Valdez was the underdog because he was on the wrong end of a five-and-a-half reach disadvantage and because many fans believed he would abandon his new calculating style when things got hot. But Berchelt seemed slower than usual. Perhaps it wasn’t the best idea to add 16 pounds from Friday’s weigh-in, when both boxers reached the 130-pound limit on the nose.
Valdez established his left jab in the first three rounds and found ways to duck under and around Berchelt’s shots. Once he gained confidence, Valdez rocked Berchelt with a left hand to the temple in the fourth round and got his first knockdown.
Berchelt gathered himself quickly and was the more effective man in the sixth and seventh rounds. But Valdez combined a left hook and a right uppercut to floor Berchelt in the ninth. There were no more comebacks forthcoming.
Valdez even experimented with a right-hand stance and stayed focused on bludgeoning Berchelt’s head, rolling up 103 power shots, according to CompuBox. In the 9th and 10th rounds, Valdez had 29 power shots and Berchelt had three.
“I’ve been doing that in other fights but people say they haven’t seen it,” Valdez said. “I wasn’t doing it as often in the fights. I didn’t get hit with a single shot when I went southpaw. It gave him something else to think about and it made it tougher on him.”
The end was disquieting, and entirely foreseeable. The shot was so mercilessly clean that it sent Teofimo Lopez, the lightweight champion, screaming from his seat into the wings at the Top Rank bubble in Las Vegas.
“I almost feel like I should do a backflip like Teofimo,” Valdez joked.
He had already stuck the landing of a lifetime.
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