Boxing Preview, Friday 10th September
Photo by Mikey Williams/Top Rank Inc via Getty Images
A lot of the attention this weekend is going to the utterly nonsensical and borderline criminal Triller card on Saturday, featuring three retired MMA fighters and a barely-mobile Evander Holyfield. It shouldn’t be. Friday gives us a card in which the headliner has attracted attention for the wrong reasons, but is still a legitimate fight with consequences, and a support fight that should be genuinely good with the US debut of a potential rising superstar in Junto Nakatani against a classy Puerto Rican in Angel Acosta. All in all, it’s a good card that will be overshadowed by those drug-test results, but really is worth a look anyway.
Oscar Valdez vs. Robson Conceicao
The main questions surrounding this fight is how the hell Oscar Valdez is even allowed to fight having tested positive for a PED a couple of weeks ago. The fight’s happening, though, so we’ll set that aside and, as is our wont, focus on what will happen in the fight and how. Looking at Conceicao’s resume on paper, this could be one of those title defenses, but in truth, Conceicao, an Olympic champion who also carries a win over Valdez from their amateur days, is a good fighter who could cause more trouble than expected.
Now yes, Valdez looked brilliant against Berchelt, he wasn’t the favourite going into that fight and he beat the younger man pretty badly. Boxing mostly on the back foot, he let Berchelt go first and then step into the pocket and counter, using his opponent’s pressure and momentum against him. He also made good use of the champion’s tendency to stay tall even in close-up exchanges to slip under and work the body unopposed. It was an excellent gameplan — as you’d expect from a Reynoso fighter — and the broad technical improvements he made should serve him well going forward regardless of an opponent’s style.
However, Conceicao is not Berchelt. Now, that means he has — as a pro — been proved to a far, far lower level, so that should be taken into account. However so should the fact that, unlike Berchelt, Conceicao isn’t a couple of months removed from a Covid case. Even if that was not a factor in Berchelt’s performance, though, the Brazilian is not someone who is going to fall into the traps he did. While he is a front-foot fighter generally speaking, it’s more a ‘take and hold the center of the ring’ front-foot than a ‘pressure, pressure’ front-foot. He maintains distance behind a jab very precisely, isn’t very interested in staying in the pocket at all, and tends to stick to that jab until it draws a reaction whereupon he’ll throw a short mid-range combination then step back and reset. ‘Educated’ would be a pretty good word to describe him. So would ‘cultured’, and the .
He does have weaknesses. Because he’s so committed to maintaining that range with his feet, he does sometimes end up leaning over his front foot to get those combinations home, which leaves him vulnerable to a counter. And if an opponent does get through his jab and into the pocket, his instinct tends to be to simply shell up behind a high guard and step out when they stop throwing. That latter will be of particular interest to Valdez, but he’ll have to do more of the work himself to get there than he did against Berchelt. As such, I’d expect the fight to be a jabbing battle early, and become about who can time their first step after that. If Valdez can draw the Brazilian into committing to combinations first he may step in while he’s set and throwing and take advantage of the passivity in the pocket to score. On the other hand if he gets impatient and chases into that gap, he might find his challenger sliding back just enough, leaving him out of shape and punishing him for it. You do have to lean towards Valdez because of that gap in proven levels, but it could be an interesting one.
Junto Nakatani vs. Angel Acosta
All that said, the most interesting fight of the evening is probably the main support act. The young Japanese champion, Nakatani, hasn’t yet broken through into a wider boxing-fan consciousness, but this could be a step towards that, fighting on US soil against an opponent who will test him, but might be tailor-made to bring out the best in him.
That last part gives you a clue how I think this is going to go, but don’t get it twisted, Angel Acosta is very good and a dangerous opponent. He held the WBO title at 108lbs for a while before losing it in very controversial fashion to Elwin Soto (by which I mean he was winning handily before being caught out by a very soft stoppage in the 12th round). This is his first significant fight at 112lbs after a couple of tune-ups, so how he’ll adjust having range disadvantages and giving up size in general, but he’s a much more patient, complete, and less crude fighter than the opponent Nakatani won this belt against, Gremiel Magramo. Another fighter who fights behind a classy jab, seeking to control range and then work his opponent with combinations as they close, he has good timing and solid variation on his punches, and isn’t easy to defuse.
His problem, however, lies in his defence, and how it’ll play into what’ll be a pretty solid size disadvantage - there’s a reason I brought that up earlier. Acosta stands very, very upright with his chin in the air, not tucking it at all, and relies on sliding back out of trouble to keep himself safe.
This got him into trouble against Soto, where he was hurt by a counter even though the stoppage was early, and it was a big factor in his earlier loss to Kosei Tanaka, too. And that was in fights where he was not the smaller man.
Nakatani is tall, and uses that well, but he’s by no means a lanky point-fighter. His lead hand is very, very, good, not just for jabbing but for manipulating his opponent’s movement and stance, and a variety of punches to get around the guard. That could spell trouble for an Acosta looking to close to enough distance to throw his own punches against a three inch gap in reach. Even if he does close, realistically Nakatani has the advantage there too — he’s very happy close in, has excellent head movement, punches well in combination to head and body, and then has a nice line in shoving his opponent off and punishing them as they seek to step back and reset.
That last could be Acosta’s undoing, since stepping back from close range has been probably his most vulnerable moment, and he’ll be in range for a long time here. He’ll have his moments in this fight, I suspect; when he can keep things in mind-range he’ll likely have some success with better timing and shot selection than anyone Nakatani has faced, but all in all I expect the young champion to simply have a little too much and stop his challenger after taking him off-balance and taking advantage. Nakatani is one to watch, so definitely do.