Scott Quigg’s California Nightmare

Last week Scott Quigg probably had the worse week of his boxing career, when he was out in California to fight Oscar Valdez for the world title but it all went wrong. So in this post I will be looking at what went wrong and were does he go from here.

All seemed to be going to plan in the build up to the fight he was saying all the right things, and he was not only hoping to become a 2 weight world champion but he was even talking about the possibility of a rematch with his arch rival Carl Frampton. However that went up in smoke on Saturday night.

Things started going wrong for him on Friday at the weigh in when he missed the weight by 2 and a half pounds, and there is a rule that says if a fighter comes in more than 2 pounds overweight then they are not allowed to try and lose it. After he missed the weight hundreds of people took to social media calling him unprofessional some people even suggested that he had missed the weight as some sort of tactic. I don’t believe that this is the case this was the first time in his career that he’d missed the weight for a fight. He is one of the most professional boxers there is, and to say it was tactical is ridiculous, it was a world title fight I can’t imagine any boxer coming into a fight over weight on purpose. However you have to give Oscar Valdez and his team credit for still taking the fight, but with the weight issue it made it even more important for him to win the fight.

On fight night it was reported that he weighed 140 pounds so we had a Featherweight vs a welterweight. He walked to the ring full of confidence but from the first bell it looked like he’d got his game plan all wrong, he couldn’t cope with the hand speed and power of Valdez and he was walking forward and backwards in straight lines which was making him easier to hit. He did try to get into the fight rocking Valdez more than once and breaking his jaw. Throughout the whole fight the better quality punches came from Valdez but all the rounds were close and hard to score. At the final bell the judges scored it 118-110 and 117-111 on the other two, I had it118-110 on my card.

In his post fight interview he admitted that the better man won on the night and he apologised to all the fans who had braved the weather and made the trip from England. When he was asked about his weight he said that he fractured his foot 4 weeks before the fight which meant that he had to start cutting his weight earlier than normal. On Thursday before the fight he was 3 pounds over and because he’d started cutting weight early by Thursday he couldn’t get the weight off because his body had shutdown.

There’s no question that he can come back from this but were does he go from here:

• Stay at featherweight: Featherweight is the right weight for him and he’s still highly ranked with many of the governing bodies. I don’t think we will ever know the truth about why he was overweight maybe he just had a bad camp which has happened to every boxer at some point in their career.
• Change trainer: I think it may be a good idea for him to go back to Joe Gallagher, he’s had a couple of fights under Freddie Roach and he just hasn’t looked like the Scott Quigg of old. He was definitely at his best under Gallagher maybe he’s got lost in the Wildcard which has happened to a lot of top fighters.

Whatever he decides to do next he’s going to have a long lay off because he’s going to have to recover from the cuts over his eye and his broken nose.

Please comment below and let me know your thoughts and what he should do next.