He was a beast. In the gym, with sparring partners, and in the ring. He would have destroyed Manny Pac who is basically a ***** compared to Valero.
I was never too impressed with valero, he always looked sloppy, his mechanics were off aswell. It's hard to judge a talent when you are facing sub par opposition. Valero is someone who will get better with history, people will start remembering him beating lesser opponents to a pulp and claim he was the second coming of jesus himself. He did have power and speed so he would be dangerous against anyone, talent wise? Not so much.
He was truly special. He had speed, power, a murderous straight left and was just as athletic as Sergio Martinez. Plus his style was incredibly fan friendly.
Valero was a beast, he wassoon becoming my favorite fighter until he got all crazy. Could have been one of the best,
Considering he beat the guy who beat one of the best fighters that the man who trained Hearns and Lewis EVER saw, I'd say he was pretty good.
He was a solid tough aggressive fighter with many flaws. People overrated him back then and still do out of respect and it's nice to see that. Though his flaws were very obvious, his punch resistance was something that was going to be exploited sooner or later and his poor defense was the door to it. He had serious power in my opinion which would have made him easily popular as he started to rise. He wasn't going to be a multi-division weight champion but he was going to make a lot of money in the sport and bring a lot of big exciting fights. It's always sad to see a professional fighter, especially an exciting one, go the way he did, but that's how it is.
very underrated defense....great speed and power. he was better earlier in his career to be honest. the dude came to cali from venezuela with skills. once he went to japan...his skill set went down hill a little bit. he seemed to be getting back to form towards the end. he could have beaten plenty of guys with his style. balls to the wall. there is footage of him sparring morales before morales beat pac. i saw him in the gym a few times before that. the dude was truly world class.
Any fighter with power is going to be overrated in this sport, regardless of limitations. While I enjoyed the Samuel "Peters" Peter parade going strong after the Williams fight, it was rather hilarious.