Oscar Valdez overcame depression, rib injuries to challenge for super featherweight title
If Oscar Valdez could completely erase 2022 from his memory banks, he’d do it in a heartbeat. The former WBC super featherweight champion not only suffered his first defeat when he was schooled by Shakur Stevenson in a match on April 30, 2022, but then he suffered back-to-back significant injuries.
In a freak accident that occurred following the Stevenson fight, Valdez, 32, slipped while walking down stairs and broke several ribs. That kept him out of the gym for a long time. When he felt he was ready, on the first day he sparred, he was hit with a body shot and he broke a couple of ribs again.
It wasn’t the way he wanted to try to make things right after the dispiriting loss to Stevenson. He was out until May 20, when he scored a decision over Adam “Bluenose” Lopez on the Devin Haney-Vasiliy Lomachenko undercard at the MGM Grand Garden in Las Vegas.
“I thought I was healed [after the slip] and I went into a sparring session and I got the ribs broken again and I was like, ‘What’s going on here?’” Valdez told Yahoo Sports. “Those made me take that long break of over a year. I didn’t know how I was going to react against someone like Adam Lopez. Just the fact of me going in there and winning that fight after everything that happened to me, I was happy for that.
“You don’t know how things are going to go in a situation like so, so when I did what I had to do in the fight with Adam Lopez, I was pleased. And that opened the door for me to go against a fighter like 'Vaquero' [Emanuel] Navarrete. I’m very happy because I feel better than ever physically and mentally. I realized just how much I missed boxing after losing to Shakur Stevenson.”
Valdez (31-1, 23 KOs) will fight Navarrete, who is 37-1 with 30 KOs, on Saturday in the main event of a Top Rank card at Desert Diamond Arena in Glendale, Arizona.
The win over Lopez wasn’t the most impressive of the 31 Valdez has posted as a professional, but it did much for him mentally.
He never imagined the fight with Stevenson would go as it did, where he struggled to hit Stevenson cleanly very often and dropped round after round. He suffered greatly after the fight.
“I was going through a depression after that,” he said. “It was difficult. I’m going through that depression and I got hurt and it made it worse and I was thinking, ‘Man, what am I going to do without boxing?’ Boxing has been such an important part of my life for so long. I’d been boxing since I was 8 years old.
“It was difficult to go through, but it was also an eye-opener for me. I realized how much I missed this sport and that I want to be a champion again and what I needed to do to get myself back to where I needed to be.”
After he struggled to cope with the loss to Stevenson, he finally began to come around when he realized that losing is as much a part of boxing as winning. Very few in the history of the sport ever get through it without suffering at least one defeat.
Valdez had been beating himself up over mistakes he felt he’d made or things he didn’t do in the fight when it finally dawned on him he needed to put that where it belonged: in the past.
“It was really rough and I was going through my own battles with myself mentally, talking to myself,” Valdez said. “And then one day, it just hit me and things changed. I started talking to myself and I said, ‘You know, Oscar, you have to suck it up. Suck it up. You know in this sport, you win some and you lose some.’ It’s life. Inside the ring and even outside the ring, you don’t always win.
“And I started to challenge myself and I was heading down the right path. Then, all of a sudden, I fell down the stairs and I broke my [ribs]. I said, ‘Aw man, why is this happening to me?’”
He injured himself in Nogales, Mexico. It was raining and the stairs were metal. It was slippery and when he took a step, he fell and his back landed hard against one of the stairs. He’d broken two ribs, it turned out.
It frustrated him to no end because it was such a normal simple thing he was doing. Valdez lives life fast and takes risks most people wouldn’t. And just after he got over his depression following the loss to Stevenson, he injured himself and delayed his return.
“I do a lot of crazy things,” Valdez said. “I ride my horse very fast. I swim with my alligator. I’m always at the beach. I’m doing these crazy things all of the time and this simple thing like walking down the stairs got me injured. That was beyond frustrating.”
He can erase everything with a good performance against Navarrete. He’s appreciative to be back and with a chance because of what he went through. He fought most of the fight against Scott Quigg with a broken jaw. He’s broken his hand and had numerous other injuries.
“Nothing that ever happened gets close to the pain you feel all the time from a broken rib,” he said.
He’s healthy now, excited and ready to perform. The crowd in Glendale should be insanely loud and he’s eager to put on a show.
“This is where I want to be and where I need to be and I’ve learned a lot about myself and this sport,” he said. “And I want to show everyone who watches this that Oscar Valdez is back.”
