Had they ever crossed gloves, I’m pretty sure that the versatile and swift Manny Pacquiao would have stuck a fork in the undefeated career of big puncher Edwin Valero.
A fight between the Pinoy Idol and the Vicious Venezolano has always seemed remote, at best, but now Valero may have stuck a fork in his own career.
Valero, who shares promoter Bob Arum (Top Rank) with Pacman, had been told to keep his nose clean so that Los Angeles based immigration lawyer Frank Ronzio, being paid by Arum, could get around the ban on Valero coming back to the United States.
Just days before Pacquiao easily decisioned Joshua Clottey, Arum was bubbling over with optimism that the border ban would be worked out and he could then match up Pacman and the freeswinging slugger.
With his immigration status murky, Valero could’ve picked up a suitcase.
He could have picked up a briefcase.
Edwin Valero and wife in happier time (Notfight.com Photo)
The one thing he did not need to do was pick up a new legal case but it looks, from initial reports, that alero may have torpedoed his possible legal reentry to America (after a DUI rap he caught in Las vegas the night of Pacman’s bout with Ricky Hatton).
Reports out of Los Andes, Venezuela, have Valero being arrested as a wife beater. His wife was treated at a local hospital for a collapsed lung and multiple bruises.
To make matters even worse, hospital officials reported a surly Valero turned up at their facility and acted aggressively towards staff.
The wife beating charges, if they go forward as it sounds they will, came on the heels a case last summer in which Valero was charged briefly with beating his own mother and sister.
Is Valero a woman beater meaning a punk?
Hurricane Edwin Valero tears into Alfredo Pitalua (AP Photo)
I don’t know and, while we must give him the presumption of innocence, it looks like Valero’s chances for bigtime fights, particularly in the U.S., are dropping towards zero.
Personally, I’ve never understood any man who hits any woman but particularly professional fighters like middleweight great Carlos Monzon who went to prison for hurling a woman off a balcony and killing her.
That long prison stint? Monzon, as great a pugilist as he was, deserved it.
So will Valero if it’s proven that he smashed up his lovely wife, the mother of his children.
Let’s see now…DUI case, allegations of mother and sister beating albeit dropped, and now charges of beating the whey out of his wife…
Valero’s boxing record remains perfect.
His personal record looks abysmal.
I would be surprised if Arum doesn’t dump this chump if the charges are carried forward and proven in his homeland.
Collapsed lungs and multiple bruises, these things are not easily explainable.
Maybe, and I don’t mean this as a joke because there’s nothing funny about it, it was a sparring accident.
Unless and until he’s totally cleared, put me down as somebody who used to root for Edwin Valero.
Maybe this character is just a bad apple who doesn’t belong in the Top Rank bunch.
Time will soon tell.
