By Keith Idec

Oscar Valdez wasn’t surprised Vasyl Lomachenko dominated Miguel Marriaga on Saturday night.

What surprised the unbeaten WBO featherweight champion was that Marriaga agreed to take such a difficult fight on short notice. Marriaga barely had a month’s notice to prepare for his shot at one of the best boxers, pound-for-pound, in the sport.

“That was what surprised me – him taking that fight with so little time to prepare,” Valdez told BoxingScene.com on Thursday. “I would have to say it was for the money, I think. You could just tell in the press conference. In the press conference with me, you could see his vibe, that he really wanted to take that belt from me and that it was in his mind that he really was gonna take that belt. In the press conference with Lomachenko, it was just like another payday for him. We didn’t see the same Marriaga, the same attitude he had toward my fight.”

The 26-year-old Valdez (22-0, 19 KOs), who’ll defend his 126-pound title against the Philippines’ Genesis Servania (29-0, 12 KOs) on September 22 in Tucson, Arizona, admits Marriaga gave him the toughest fight of his five-year pro career thus far. But Mexico’s Valdez believes Marriaga needed a longer break to recover from their grueling 12-round fight, which Valdez won by unanimous decision April 22 in Carson, California.

“We noticed that his attitude wasn’t there and his conditioning wasn’t there,” Valdez said. “He didn’t have a proper training camp and that doesn’t help your mindset. You know that you didn’t train right, so you already know what you’re gonna do inside the ring. He didn’t have that confidence to give it his best and try, where if you fall down once, get back up and give it your best again. I think little by little, he started going down and down.”

Lomachenko (9-1, 7 KOs), the WBO super featherweight champion, dropped Colombia’s Marriaga (25-3, 21 KOs) once apiece in the third and seventh rounds before Marriaga decided not to come out of his corner to start the eighth round at Microsoft Theater in Los Angeles. Valdez expected their ESPN main event to be as lopsided as it was.

“I wasn’t surprised at all,” Valdez said. “I knew that result was gonna happen. Me and my team knew that would happen because it wasn’t that long ago that we had a tough fight ourselves. Me and Marriaga had a tough fight and he had very short notice that he was gonna fight Lomachenko. He didn’t have to prepare, I think, for this fight because you could see by his stamina that he got worn down by Lomachenko. But I think Marriaga was coming off a loss, going up a weight class and, I mean, he’s not fighting any ordinary fighter – he’s fighting Lomachenko.

“Even if Marriaga would’ve trained a hundred percent and would’ve been well-prepared, I still think the result would’ve been the same, him losing to Lomachenko. But I don’t think he would’ve gotten stopped by Lomachenko. I think he would’ve put up a better fight. But it was just a result of him having short notice, him not having a proper training camp, so little time, and also he didn’t have time to recover from the fight that me and Marriaga had. I think a lot of people don’t see that. They just see the result in the fight.”

Keith Idec is a senior writer/columnist for BoxingScene.com. He can be reached on Twitter @Idecboxing.