As he gets ready to take on Liam Wilson in a crucial fight at the Desert Diamond Arena in Glendale, Arizona, Mexican fighter Oscar Valdez believes it is time to swiftly forget about his countryman Emmanuel Navarrete's setback.
Oscar Valdez is making a return to the ring for the first-time in six months on March 29, 2023 to battle it out with Wilson for the WBO Lightweight title.
It was a heartbreaking loss to Emmanuel Navarrete in February last year, which left him with a discoloured and swollen eye from the fight, leaving him 'ashamed' and 'embarrassed' as said in his recent interview.
“It was a rough two weeks for me,” Valdez said in an interview with BoxingScene. “I felt ashamed of myself. I felt embarrassed to walk out the street, to go to the grocery store, because I didn’t want people to see me. I was very hard on myself.
“But then when I started going out a little bit more, stepping out, people would come up to me, and would actually thank me. ‘Thank you, for giving us that fight.’ I said, ‘But I lost.’ They didn’t care. They said, ‘Thank you for giving your effort. We saw your passion.’ Several people said that to me.
“It definitely made me pick up my head, because I had my head down,” Valdez said. “When they said that, it made me feel a little more OK. It was like, well, alright, they see what happened a lot different – a lot better than the way I was feeling inside.”
Valdez is regarded as one of the best boxers in this generation and holds an incredible record of 31 wins in 33 fights, with 23 of those victories coming by way of knockout. His only defeats came in the fight against Shakur Stevenson and Navarrete.
He is billed to redeem himself in a ten-round junior lightweight fight against Australian boxer Liam Wilson on March, 29, 2024 in Glendale, Arizona.
