Robson Conceicao lectured O’Shaquie Foster on the value of hard work in their final press conference today ahead of the defense of his WBC super featherweight title in their Saturday rematch.
Credit: Mikey Williams/Top Rank Boxing)
The two will meet this Saturday, November 2nd, at the Turning Stone Resort Casino in Verona, New York. Conceicao wants to finish what he started, outworking the slacker Foster and showing that to be a world champion, you must work hard. He’s got the Brazilian hard-worker attitude.
The former WBC champion Foster (22-3, 12 KOs) admitted that he didn’t want to put in the effort to let his hands go to quiet the booing crowd in their fight earlier this year on July 6th in Newark, New Jersey, and wound up losing a 12-round split decision.
Foster has remained unable to grasp why he lost after all these months, and he has continued to complain that he should have won. During today’s press conference, the Brazilian Conceicao (19-2-1, 9) explained to Foster, like a coach talking to one of his fighters, that he didn’t throw enough punches and just ran around the ring.
He didn’t want to work hard and thought he could win by hitting and running. He looked like he had morphed into Shakur Stevenson and forgot that the judges would not give him the same favorable A-side treatment as him.
“This fight is personal for me because I feel that a champion is a fighter who goes out there and doesn’t run around, who looks for the fight, who tries to win, and doesn’t just throw one or two punches and then moves away,” said Conceicao about Foster.
I don’t think Foster can work harder than he did. It looks like Foster no longer has the fight in him after his war with slugger Eduardo Hernandez on October 28th last year in Cancun, Mexico. Hernandez hurt Foster several times in that fight with big shots, forcing him to rally in the 12th round to get a knockout. Even with all the defensive work that Foster put in, he got hit a lot by Hernandez.
That fight took a lot out of the 31-year-old Foster, who hasn’t looked like the same fighter since in his matches against Abraham Nova and Conceicao. In both of those contests, Foster didn’t let his hand go, and at a lot of big shots.
Nova was putting it on Foster from rounds eight through twelve and did more than enough to defeat him earlier this year on February 16th. The judges gave Foster a 12-round split decision, but he deserved a defeat. It was the same situation when Foster fought Conceicao. He didn’t throw, and it was all he could do to squeeze out a few shots. This goes back to the Eduardo Hernandez fight. He took something out of Foster.
“This time around, I have no doubt in my mind that I will do a better job and represent Brazil better,” said Conceicao to the media about his rematch with Foster. “I didn’t feel much power. He has good defense and a good jab; he’s very technical but not very powerful.
“Foster’s defense is complicated and challenging. If he’s saying he’s going to come and strike more, that’s what I’m expecting. If that’s the case, it’s going to be way more interesting. That was the fight that I had prepared myself for the first time around.”
Foster can’t strike more because he’s not a come-forward type of fighter. He can fight in brief spurts as he did against Eduardo Hernandez in round 12, but that was a rare occasion. He doesn’t fight like that and never has. If he tried to fight like that against Conceicao, he’d get knocked out.
“If he does that the second time around, great,” said Conceicao. “That’s what I would like to see as well because it would be a way more interesting fight and better for the public. I’m ready. Let’s see if he does it this time around. I’m ready.
“I feel this fight will be harder and way more competitive, and that’s what I feel,” said Conceicao.
