Edwin Valero vs. Joel Casamayor?

Steve Kim mentioned this fight is being discussed in his latest blog. I don't have all of the details since I'm not a member of his site and can't view the complete blog.

Anyway, I think this fight would be mildly intriguing. Casamayor is faded, but he did look good against Marquez for the first half of their fight. If Valero can blitz him early like he's been doing most of his opponents, I'd be impressed, even though Casamayor's durability isn't what it once was.

I remember these two getting into at the Lightweight Lightning presser earlier this year. Casamayor called Valero a long haired prostitute and communist.

 

This analysis of the tournament is what caused the scuffle between Edwin Valero and Jorge Barrios when the hard punching Venezuelan arrived to the podium at a press conference for Golden Boy Promotion’s April 4th pay per view card in Los Angeles and boldly stated:

“Seventy-five percent of the fighters on the card are on their way out. They are talented, but I’m here to make some changes,” when he was interrupted by Jorge Barrios who yelled out a couple of cat calls which prompted Valero to direct his verbiage towards the Argentinean strong man and say in the microphone, “Yes you’re going, you’re on your way out, you’re not useful anymore.”

As Valero was saying again and again, ”Yah you’re on your way out man,” Jorge Barrios was yelling, “You’re going to throw me out, you’re going to force me out?”

Then Barrios who was seated behind the podium stood up out of his chair and inched a step closer toward Valero and questioned him in an aggressive manner, “You’re going to take me out of this game? You are going to take me out? Nobody throws me out. I leave when I want to leave. Who are you talking to?”

Valero immediately turned around and pretended to throw a quick feint as Kenny Adams and Richard Schaefer got between the two and Valero returned to the podium.

In an exclusive phone interview with ***********.com Valero explained how he perceived the incident.

“They don’t have that much time left in their careers. I wasn’t talking to him I was talking about Casamayor and Pitalua, they are older and on the way out and Barrios started acting like an ass. He was bothered by my statement. He didn’t let me talk so I said to him yah you’re on the way out, you don’t have it anymore you’re no longer useful," Valero said.

"And he just kept talking asking me, you’re going to take me out, you’re going to take me out, and I went over there and I was going to slap him across the face, but there was table between us and then he turned into a little ***** and some people prevented it from going any further. I told him, all these guys are at the end and I’m coming to clean up and reinvigorate the division.”

Valero added that it was Joel Casamayor’s initial remarks that sparked the incident.

“People didn’t hear, but it really started with that old man Casamayor. He’s ridiculous, he was saying in a low voice when I was up there that he was going to punch me in the face. Later I told him you’re crazy and asked why he would you say something that, and he was like you’re a communist. Venezuela is a socialist democracy. I told him you are you are just upset because you can’t go to Cuba. He called me a communist again," Valero said.

"Everyone has their own ideologies and he should respect that. Later on after we took pictures with Richard Shaeffer. I told him don’t tell me you are going to hit me. You don’t know me. You don’t know what I’m going to do. He said you’re a communist, you have your president on your chest and I told him I was proud to have it there. I’ve never met these guys before. I don’t understand, but their careers are almost over. They are in their late thirties it’s almost over for them. I would knock both of them out.”

At the end of the day, uncontrolled violence that has erupted at so many press conferences did not occur in this one, but the scuffle did plant the seeds for an exciting match in the second round of the tournament. A historical match of South American rivals that would follow a tradition of rivalries in that region established by Nicolino Loche-Antonio Cervantes, Carlos Monzon-Rodrigo Valdez, and the more recent classic between Barrios and Freitas in 2003.

 

Apparently both called him a communist. But Barrios called him the long haired prostitute.