On November 22nd at the Cotai Arena at the Venetian Resort in Macau, China, WBA Light Welterweight Champion Jessie Vargas will look to improve upon his current record of 25-0, 9 KOs when he defends his title against former lightweight world champion Antonio Demarco, on the undercard of Manny Pacquiao vs. Chris Algieri.
As Vargas looks to defend his belt for the third time, he has taken the reigns of his training away from coach Ismael Salas (who guides Guillermo Rigondeaux and formerly Yuriorkis Gamboa) and handed them over to former pound-for-pound king Roy Jones Jr. Fernando Pimental caught up with Jones to find out the specifics of how this new training relationship was formed.
Jones was adamant that before they got together Vargas was doing just enough to get by in his fights, but that one night things would not go his way if he continued to fight in the same manner.
“After you win a title you can’t keep squeaking by, so I told him, look, come around the hook so you can at least keep these guys off you and start knocking people out because if you keep getting lucky and squeaking by, one night things may not go your way.”
Jones then pointed to one particular incident that pushed his new charge completely under his tutelage.
“He came to the gym, lo and behold his trainer (Salas) had left and had to go train David Haye so he was stuck without a trainer. So I started teaching him and he said, ‘alright I wannna learn from you then.'”
After this, Jones explained that due to his other commitments, he trains other fighters like light-heavyweight Jean Pascal, he commentates for HBO, and of course he still fights himself somewhere in the wild of Siberia. He and Vargas don’t get that much face-to-face time and so have to take advantage of Skype and other such social networking tools to make sure they train effectively. This is strange as it seems as if Vargas is walking away from one, and in to another situation where he may not be the primary focus of his trainer. Perhaps that isn’t an ideal situation for a budding young world champion regardless of who hold his pads.
However, Jones insists that he is happy with the progression that Vargas has shown in their short time together.
“I see a balance improvement, a power improvement, and a speed improvement. I see a guy that’s enjoying what he’s doing now. I see a guy that’s making things happen instead of just operating off what happens.”
An improvement in power would certainly not go amiss for Vargas who hasn’t scored a stoppage since he halted Walter Estrada in two rounds, and that was three and a half years ago. Jones is right, in order to mix it with the top guys, that particular facet of his game needs an overhaul.
In terms of Vargas’s future options, providing he gets past Demarco on November 22nd, Jones is looking at the top of the heap but references the pesky political infighting that has plagued boxing over the years, as something that will guide who the big fights will be against.
“This is boxing, to be the best you gotta beat the best. The best on this side of the fence [meaning under the HBO/Top Rank side as opposed to the Showtime/Golden Boy side] is Manny Pacquaio, the best on the other side of the fence in Floyd Mayweather. But those two fences don’t really cross so he has to take the best on this side of the fence. He’s the champ not me, if he say he wanna fight Godzilla then we gonna go fight Godzilla.”
That last remark came as a deflection to being asked about a possible encounter with lineal 140 pound champion Danny ‘Swift’ Garcia, who in all likelihood is on his way upstairs and out of the division, leaving a vacuum in the light welterweight class that I’m sure Vargas will be keen to fill. If he is does that he must make the improvements that Jones was talking about here, otherwise he will fail to procure the respect of top-level future opponents on his “side of the fence” such as Ruslan Provodnikov and Chris Algieri, or even young guns like Jose Benavidez Jr.