ON ACTIVE DUTY: Suarez stays sharp, hopes for last-minute call

Instead of getting heartbroken, world ranked super-featherweight Charly Suarez will remain in training mode.

The rationale behind this is simple.

“We don’t want to be caught off-guard,” Delfin Boholst, Suarez’s lead trainer and former national team pal, told DAILY TRIBUNE.

Top Rank Inc., the Las Vegas-based outfit promoting Suarez, bared that Emanuel Navarrete is defending his World Boxing Organization (WBO) 130-lb crown against fellow Mexican Oscar Valdez on 7 December in Arizona.

No less than Top Rank’s vice president for operations, Carl Moretti, said that fight is proceeding as planned and Suarez will have to wait for his turn.

Moretti said Suarez’s bid to fight for the title would depend on who will emerge victorious between Navarrete and Valdez.

Boholst and Suarez are no strangers to last-minute switches.

In fact, in Suarez’s last fight in Glendale, Arizona, last month, his original opponent Andres Cortez pulled out less than two weeks before the fight and was replaced by Jorge Castaneda.

Suarez had the opportunity to withdraw from the fight as well but he chose to go on and eventually knocked out Castaneda in three rounds to boost his unbeaten record to 18-0with ten knockouts.

Immediately afterwards, Boholst asked Top Rank that Suarez be given the chance to face Navarrete with the WBO strap at stake.

Despite Top Rank’s decision to go ahead with the Navarrete-Valdez clash, the 36-year-old Suarez remains active training.

Former Ilocos Sur governor Chavit Singson, who attends to the boxer’s every need, had wanted to import Navarrete for a showdown with Suarez also in December.

Meanwhile, Suarez will continue to work out at Singson’s property in Tagaytay City where a mini gym has been set up to host the fighter.