Chris Colbert says he can only blame himself for KO loss to Jose “Rayo” Valenzuela

Chris Colbert says the blame for his knockout defeat to Jose “Rayo” Valenzuela last December should fall on one person, and one person only.

Himself.

“It’s all on me,” Colbert said in an interview with Big Fight Breakdown co-hosts Jimmy Smith, Paulie Malignaggi and Chris Algieri. “By the end of the fight, I apologized to my whole team: ‘Damn, I’m sorry. I didn’t listen. That was on me.’”

(Full disclosure: Big Fight Breakdown streams on ProBox TV, which owns BoxingScene.com.)

Colbert departed the junior lightweight division following a wide decision loss to Hector Garcia in February 2022. He arrived at lightweight 13 months later, in March 2023, taking on Jose “Rayo” Valenzuela. Colbert was dropped in the first round but won unanimously, albeit by the closest of decisions, 95-94 on all three judges’ scorecards.

“He kept thumbing me in my eye. He’d throw that left hand and it would thumb me in my eye,” Colbert said. “So every time he hit me, I would tight shell and just hold on to him. And then when I’d get my vision back, I’d start going to work on him.”

Their rematch came nine months later, as last year was coming to a close. Again, Valenzuela came at Colbert from the outset. And again, Valenzuela scored a first-round knockdown, with the referee ruling that the ropes held Colbert up. This time Valenzuela pulled ahead on the card and put Colbert away in the sixth.

“I never really fully recovered,” he said. “And then in that round when he knocked me out, I went to go step back but my body wasn’t reacting. I tried to pull back but the number one rule in boxing is don’t pull back with your hands down. And that’s exactly what I did.”

Valenzuela has since moved up to junior welterweight, upsetting Isaac Cruz in August via split decision to win the WBA world title. 

Colbert said he realized in the Valenzuela fights that lightweights were too strong for him. Yet his upcoming fight with Omar Salcido, airing October 9 as the main event on ProBox, will still be at 135 rather than 130.

But Colbert, now 17-2 (6 KOs), says he’s learned from his mistakes, including not allowing himself to get caught on the ropes.

“I want to go back to my basics, stick to what I was doing, punching and moving and being this slick guy that you can’t catch, the guy that you see and then he disappears,” said the 27-year-old from Brooklyn.

Salcido is a 24-year-old originally from Hermosillo, Sonora, Mexico, and now living outside of San Diego. He is 19-1 (13 KOs). That loss came in October 2023, when he dropped a wide decision to unbeaten Jose Nunez. Salcido’s last appearance was in December, an eight-round unanimous decision over the 15-5 Luis Coria.

“Me coming off a big knockout loss, everybody was probably expecting me to come back and fight a journeyman,” Colbert said. “They offered me a couple of them and I turned them down. It don’t get me off the couch. It’s not going to motivate me to really want to go in there, go through a nine- or 10-week training camp and train for a fight just to go in there and starch them real quick. I told them, ‘Give me a dog.’”

Another defeat for Colbert would be a significant setback. A victory, meanwhile, would at least put him back in the right direction.

“I feel like I’m just at this point where God gave me everything I wanted, and then he took it back,” Colbert said. “And now it’s time — he just put a roadblock to make me work for it, to see if I really want it.”

David Greisman, who has covered boxing since 2004, is on Twitter @FightingWords2 and @UnitedBoxingPod. He is the co-host of the United Boxing Podcast. David’s book, “Fighting Words: The Heart and Heartbreak of Boxing,” is available on Amazon.