Southland boxer Oscar Valdez on brink of earning first world title

Oscar Valdez relishes the tranquillity he finds at home each day in Lake Elsinore after fighting through the round-trip freeway traffic for his boxing training sessions in Carson.

The opportunity to rest as he’s been preparing for Saturday’s World Boxing Organization featherweight title fight against Argentina’s Matias Rueda at MGM Grand includes taking in the scenery of a glistening blue lake and picturesque surrounding hills.

“Very peaceful,” Valdez, 25, said.

In the quiet, in thoughts Valdez is reluctant to discuss, the vision of winning his first world title has reached him.

“I imagine myself winning. I have to think like a winner,” he said. “I have confidence in myself, faith in the work we did and I’m going to show that Saturday.

“That was a dream as a kid and now I’m very close to achieving it.”

Valdez (19-0, 17 knockouts), a two-time Olympian for Mexico, positioned himself for a title shot on April 9, when he scored a technical knockout of Evgeny Gradovich in the fourth round on the Manny Pacquiao-Timothy Bradley III undercard.

The WBO title opening came when former champion Vasyl Lomachenko vacated the belt in June after winning the super-featherweight version.

Against Argentinian Rueda (26-0, 23 KOs), Valdez understands from watching Marcos Maidana and Lucas Matthysse that, “those Argentinians, they don’t have much to say, but they have hard-hitting punches.

“[Rueda’s] a hard-hitting fighter. His record says it. I’ve seen tapes of him. He hits guys, they fall. But I’m ready for whatever he brings.”

The bout will be the co-main event on Saturday’s HBO pay-per-view card headlined by a junior-welterweight title-unification bout between unbeaten WBO champion Terence Crawford of Omaha, Neb., and unbeaten WBC champion Viktor Postol of Ukraine.

Valdez’s boxing skill and ability to land his own power shots make him one of veteran promoter Bob Arum’s top young fighters.

Arum even dared to compare Valdez to Mexican greats Erik Morales and Marco Antonio Barrera at Thursday’s news conference.

The praise was quickly followed by a warning from Valdez’s father, Oscar Sr., who taught his son boxing in Tucson and now resides in the southern Arizona town of Nogales.

“I don’t like to think that he’s a big star now, because he’s not,” Valdez Sr. said. “So, I tell him he needs to go little by little. I told my son not to think he’s the big superstar, because he’s not.’’

A chuckling Valdez Jr. admitted of Arum, “I think he exaggerated. Morales is my idol. It means a lot to me. I’ve got a long way to even get close to what Erik Morales and Marco Antonio Barrera have done, but that’s my dream, to do that one day.

“I’m very focused on what I do, and I know what I’m capable of doing.”