Richard Torrez is targeting his sixth straight stoppage victory against Willie Jake on the undercard for Emanuel Navarrete's world title fight against Oscar Valdez, live on Sky Sports from 2am on Sunday morning
Thursday 10 August 2023 12:03, UK
Richard Torrez wants revenge on the man who beat him in the Olympic super-heavyweight final.
Now that Bakhodir Jalolov, the Uzbek who defeated him to take the gold medal at the Tokyo Games in 2021, has signed with promoter Top Rank, Torrez believes he'll get his opportunity.
"I would love that opportunity in the future," Torrez told Sky Sports. "Now that we're stablemates, there's a pathway now. There's a way that we could actually have this fight.
"I really do hope that one day we can meet again."
Jalolov fights next on the August 26 Jared Anderson undercard. The towering Uzbek is a fearsome heavyweight. He is a tall, heavy-handed southpaw. As well as being the Olympic champion he has a 12-0 (12) professional record.
But Torrez believes he could upset him in a longer distance pro fight. "I think it would be really cool to show - me being the average-sized heavyweight - what the average guy can do. I think working hard and nose to the grindstone and just making sure that we're doing our due diligence will pay off in the end," he said.
"I think it is a recipe that I'm liking the ingredients to," he continued. "I think that fight is going to play really well into my training, the moving my head, the staying in close, the conditioning.
"While I'm not preparing for that, I'm preparing for Saturday night, I'm excited that one day I will have that chance."
Torrez is a 5-0 (5) pro himself and his next fight, against Willie Jake, is live on Sky Sports in the early hours of Sunday morning.
He believes he has been honing an all-action style that will be effective even against the top heavyweights.
"I think that's a statement to who I am as a fighter. I'm not the guy that's going to sit back and wait. I'm going to go out there and I'm going to make things happen," Torrez warned.
"I have the ability to put on a great show because at the end of the day I like the action. I really do. I'm not one of those guys that sits back and wants to have that one-shot hitter-quitter.
"I want to get in there, I want to do work. At the end of the fight I want to be dead tired. If I'm not dead tired after the fight sometimes I feel like I haven't done enough. And so I want to go in there and I want to throw punches, get inside and make an exciting fight."
Heavyweight boxing this year has been plagued by the problem of its elite fighters not boxing one another. In the weeks to come Anthony Joshua, Oleksandr Usyk and Tyson Fury will all be boxing but they'll be fighting Robert Helenius, Daniel Dubois and UFC star Francis Ngannou respectively, not each other.
But Torrez doesn't expect the rising prospects in the division to be so circumspect.
"I'm really excited for the future generation of boxing," Torrez said. "It's going to build to some very good fights in the future for us as these new up and comers."
Torrez wants to fight Jalolov. He wants to fight Anderson, another amateur rival who has been earmarked as the USA's next great star.
"You can still admire people while knowing one day things might happen. Right now I'm a full-fledged Jared Anderson fan," he said.
"Jared Anderson being Jared Anderson and having that huge following and having a lot of people talking about him being the next American heavyweight champ, and me coming up and people starting to question that whole scene, I think it's going to lead to a very beautiful fight in the future and I'm looking forward to that."
To realise those big ambitions, Torrez must overcome Jake this weekend.
"My opponent is a slick fighter, he's been able to stay in there a little bit with some decent guys. I just really want to show what Richard Torrez has been working on," he said.
While he might be on the small side for a heavyweight, so far as a pro Torrez has always found the finish.
"I'm 5-0 with five knockouts, I like being able to say that but at the end of the day it is really about me bettering myself as a boxer," he noted.
"It's not so much me going out there slugging with them. It's that continual action that really gets people hurt. It's that two, three shots back-to-back-to-back that puts an end to things.
"Anyone can hurt you, I really believe that," Torrez added with ominous intent.
"It only takes 10 pounds of pressure to knock someone out."
Richard Torrez will box on the undercard of the Emanuel Navarrete vs Oscar Valdez world title fight live on Sky Sports Main Event or Sky Sports Action from 2am on Sunday morning.
