LAS VEGAS - Last week, the boxing world had a collective groan when it learned that Errol Spence Jr. had a retinal tear in his left eye and would be out of his scheduled IBF/WBC welterweight title defense on Saturday against Manny Pacquiao.
When you lose one-half of such a marquee affair, typically, the entire card gets rescheduled. That caused a bit of concern for Robert Guerrero, who was going to face Victor Ortiz in the show's co-main event. A training camp could have been all for naught, and he would maybe have had to take on a lesser foe for less money.
Luckily for Guerrero, he didn't have to worry about any of that, as Yordenis Ugas, who was set for the co-main event, got bumped to the main event opposite Pacquiao.
"I didn't know what was going on," Guerrero admitted to DAZN after the undercard press conference on Thursday. "I mean, I was going to still train because having a great team, they would have found me on something right away because I'm ready.
"It was just like, ‘Man, what's going on?. Hopefully, a replacement is found, and everything goes down’. Sure enough, right away, I found about Ugas being the replacement."
Since beating Andre Berto in November 2012, the former two-division world champion's career has been on a pendulum, going 5-5 in his last ten fights. Three of the setbacks were against Floyd Mayweather Jr., Keith Thurman, and Danny Garcia. But "The Ghost" has been on a resurgence, winning three consecutive contests, with two of those coming inside the distance.
Now, Guerrero's got the chance to notch the most significant win against the former WBC welterweight champion, who returns from over a two-year layoff. Stylistically, it's a tailor-made matchup for both Guerrero and Ortiz. They are both action fighters that don't like to take the foot off the gas pedal. That is precisely the type of fight Guerrero is expecting and one he hopes people are talking about on Sunday morning.
"I got a lot of respect for Victor," Guerrero said. "He's a great fighter, comes to fight all the time, and knowing that he does that, it's going to be a great fight. I'm ready to go and put in the work that I need to.
"You're gonna see a great fight no matter what. Whether it's on the outside, on the inside, myself and Victor come to fight all the time. It's going to be a fight that everybody's going to benefit from and might be the show-stealer."