I don't like but love Valdez in this. Concrete chin and he'll bust up Iran for the tko stoppage. Somewhere between rounds 6-10. Barkley hangs in there but another war for Iran.
Valdes was levels above Barkley. It's a one-sided beatdown, until about the mid-rounds stage, when Valdes takes the 'W' by stoppage.
It's the mobile fighters I think Valdes has more struggles with. A guy like Barkley does have, on paper, some strong basic attributes that could give Rodrigo a tough fight....great height advantage, good reach advantage, a long, heavy accurate jab and right hand...in a way, Barkley at his best at middle (as opposed to the later, declined fighter at higher weights) when working his jab, using his physical advantages, and picking his punches more patiently can sort of give much cruder Monzon vibes. But he always struggled to sustain that sort of patient stand-up style for more than 3-4 round sections whenever he fought other fighters that were around his ability level or more. The slow reflexes and leaky defence would take shots and the sloppier brawler would come out, or he'd just get frustrated and sloppier for a while, then he'd calm down and tidy up a bit..and so on. Against Duran, I thought he was very comfortable at times when working behind the jab and picking Roberto off, but the slop was never far away to keep Roberto in the fight, and while Duran was still capable of lovely moves, he's no Valdes as an overall package here. I was never impressed with Valdes footwork, but his smooth Kalule/Canelo'ish upperbody slipping and countering against an opponent in front of him was top-notch and he was an excellent punchpicker/puncher. i think Barkley, as he usually did, tries to start out behind his jab, with the occasional burst of aggression, but when you look at how well Valdes did slipping/countering against Monzon's rangy, upright jabbing (the apex standup jabber in the division, arguably) in the early/mid rounds, I think it won't be long until he tags Barkley with something big. From there it'll descend into an increasingly one-sided, but entertaining and hard fought war until Barkley gets stopped, probably circa 6-10, but possibly earlier. Either that, or Barkley will get it together again and go back to boxing for a while, before rinse and repeat. Rodrigo probably wasn't as physically strong as Barkley, but he was very durable and could fight really well off the ropes if need be.
