He does have plenty of time, but it is a bit frusatrating to hear that he's the next big star of Puerto Rico yet see him treading water more than 3 years after his debut. And lets not forget that he's being continually compared with Cotto and Tito. Verdejo's next bout will be his 21st, and he turns 23 a month later. In fight #20 Tito won his first title, stopping Blocker for the IBF 147lb title. He was 20. At the age of 22 he was 25-0 (21) with wins over Camacho, Campas, Carr and Blocker, and was 6-0 (5) in world title fights. In fight #20 Cotto was fighting in a world title eliminator against Ndou, he was 23 but had scores wins over Maussa, Sosa, Bazan, Juuko. He's being sold to us as one of the best prospects in the world but not being matched like one. I think some are just waiting to see if he is the goods, but it's fair to say that the wait is longer than anyone really wanted...
I'd like to see Verdejo take some sort of step up. Not necessarily top 10 guys but someone better than he's been beating would be good to see. This next fight isn't really a big deal though. He just had an HBO fight and has another scheduled in early June. That's two HBO dates a little over 3 months apart. His next fight is simply a stay busy fight in between his HBO dates.
Makes sense they are taking a cautiously regressive step after William Silva exposed Verdejo as being yet unready for prime time. Mamani not only has the official losses to Gumer Carrasco and Coco Madani, he got a huge gift over a faded DeMarcus Corley. (even local Bolivian press thought Chop had dominated)
Verdejo needs as much help as he can get. The guy would get exposed by a top 10 fighter if he fought one right now. He needs a new trainer and needs to conserve his energy while throwing punches. He wastes a lot of energy trying to KO people and eats a lot of unnecessary punches, he can't knock everyone out, he's not Trinidad.
Who is? ...but yeah, it has been widely promulgated that is the best thing PR has produced since Tito. Verdejo can't carry Junito's jockstrap, and honestly will be lucky to go down with even as good a career as Quintana (it will be hard topping Williams for an individual best W, and El Indio had a couple more very solid ones in Latimore and Julio, which Verdejo hasn't come even close to replicating yet)
he got exposed by that brazilian he was punching air all night. Ever seen an "elite" fighter miss that many shots.
