Junior welterweight titlist Jessie Vargas has chosen to switch trainers a month away from his biggest fight in his career this week, parting ways with one future Hall Of Famer in Roy Jones Jr., in favor of another, Erik Morales.
Vargas is preparing to challenge former two-division titleholder Timothy Bradley Jr. for the vacant WBO welterweight title on June 27th at the StubHub Center in Carson, California.
He is currently training in his hometown of Las Vegas and with Roy Jones’s hectic schedule making him available only sporadically during Vargas’s training camp, it left Vargas with virtually no other choice, but to make a change. Vargas came up with Mexican star and former four-division titleholder Erik Morales.
Morales hasn’t trained a fighter for a fight this big as of yet, but having vast experience in the ring as a great fighter and growing up around the sport, he can prove worthy to get the job done. Plus having already established a relationship with Vargas, Morales looks to be a pretty safe choice amongst a very unorthodox situation.
Erik Morales will be Vargas’s fifth trainer in his seven-year career. He was also trained by Roger Mayweather and Robert Alcazar. Jones Jr. has only trained Vargas for his last fight against Antonio DeMarco.
Jones was in that training camp for only two weeks due to his packed schedule along with Jones Jr. continuing to train himself for fights. Jones is pursuing a world title shot against WBO cruiserweight champion Marco Huck.
Vargas felt that he needed more attention going into a big fight with a ferocious fighter like Bradley.
This is truly a big step up for Vargas. We will have to see if switching trainers so late in camp will hinder him in this fight as he has an already steep mountain to climb going against ‘Desert Storm’ Tim Bradley.
Bradley needs to get back on track as he has gone 1-1-1 in his past three fights. Look for these two to clash June 27th on HBO and look for an excited ‘El Terrible’ Erik Morales to be in the corner of his new and his best fighter to date, Jessie Vargas.
