Sanchez’s career on line Saturday night
ABQ fighter has lost 2 of 3 after 14-0 start
The competition, Albuquerque’s Jason Sanchez knew, would get tougher after he signed with major boxing promoter Top Rank, Inc., two years ago.
Yet, when Sanchez steps into a Las Vegas, Nevada, boxing ring on Saturday, he won’t only be competing against Adam Lopez.
He’ll be competing against the version of himself that lost his last fight.
In June, Sanchez faced Puerto Rico’s Christopher Diaz in Las Vegas. A victory that day might have been a springboard to world contender status in the featherweight division — even toward a second world title shot; Sanchez had lost by unanimous decision to then-champion Oscar Valdez a year before.
Instead, Sanchez was thoroughly outboxed in losing to Diaz by lopsided unanimous decision. It was the Albuquerquean’s second loss in three bouts after having won his first 14 pro fights.
Losing three out of four, San
chez said in a phone interview, would be unacceptable.
“(Victory on Saturday) is really important for me,” said Sanchez, 26, married and the father of three. “It’s been already over six months since my last fight and I lost . ... I’ve been working really hard. I don’t want to take another loss, so I’m taking this camp really serious.”
It’s not as if Sanchez wasn’t serious about his preparation for Diaz. But relatively short notice (three weeks) and the COVID-19 pandemic, he said, hampered his preparation. He was able to spar at the Sanchez family’s gym on Old Coors SW, but only with his brother Jose Luis, a junior middleweight.
“It was just a little harder,” he said. “Now, we’ve kind of adjusted everything. Our gym’s been open and we’ve kind of just learned to work through the whole COVID, and it’s been a good camp this time.”
Pepe Sanchez, the boxer’s father and head trainer, brought in a quality sparring partner from Texas. Sanchez also got perhaps the highest quality sparring available in the person of Jamel Herring, the current WBO junior lightweight champion.
“I only sparred (Herring) one time, but I got that experience,” he said.
Sanchez (15-2, eight knockouts) and Lopez (14-2, six knockouts) have two opponents in common. Both lost to Valdez — Lopez by seventh-round TKO, though he dropped the former champion in the second round — and both defeated Puerto Rican Jean Carlos Rivera.
Lopez, of Glendale, California, has two nicknames: “BluNose,” for reasons unexplained, and “The Glendale Gatti.” The latter, a reference to the late, hyper-aggressive boxer Arturo Gatti, was bestowed upon him by Top Rank publicist Evan Korn after Lopez’s performance in a highly entertaining victory over Luis Coria last June.
Yet, Sanchez does not see Lopez as a particularly aggressive fighter. “He’s more of a boxer,” he said. In any case, whatever pressure Lopez applies will be equaled if not surpassed by the pressure Sanchez is putting on himself.
He’s fighting not just for himself, after all, but for his family: his wife, Marlina; daughter Zaylyn, 6; son Jaythen, 4, and daughter Skylin, born on Jan. 2.
“I don’t want to lose again,” he said. “I’m real hungry to get back in the ring and get a win. I know I can’t take another loss, so that’s why I’ve been training really hard.
“Just pretty much training, and just family time. That’s all I do.”