‘It’s definitely make or break for me’: Hurd recognizes the stakes of Rosario showdown

Jarrett Hurd is well aware of what people have been saying about him. The reader comments under the Boxing Scene article from last week announcing his next fight, on Aug. 21 on ProBox TV against fellow former titleholder Jeison Rosario, offer a representative sample:

“This, like the Joyce-Chisora fight, is a fight to see who is shot more.”

“Has he learned any defense? Battles of attrition ruined this guy”

“Next stop: Shotville.”

Closing in on his 34th birthday at the end of this month, having endured a recent stretch in which he lost three of four fights, now more than five years removed from the end of his junior middleweight title reign and seven years beyond the start of his peak stretch of defeating Tony Harrison, Austin Trout, and Erislandy Lara in succession, Hurd is not oblivious to either reality or perception.

He admits to feeling his age sometimes. He acknowledges needing to do less pure slugging and take fewer punches. He knows the clock is ticking. But he isn’t finished believing in himself.

Rosario is younger, at 29, but is in a similar spot, having lost three times since 2020 — all three by KO within eight rounds. So does Hurd see this fight, with a 164-pound weight limit, as make or break for both boxers?

“I can’t really speak for him, but it’s definitely make or break for me,” Hurd said. “I feel like if I can’t get a win over Jeison Rosario, that answers the question, ‘Will I make it back to that top level?’ This fight right here is gonna answer a lot of questions for me.”

Some of them are questions the boxing world has been asking for five years, since Hurd’s upset loss in a thriller against Julian “J-Rock” Williams first got people wondering if his straight-ahead style made him the sort of fighter who, after burning bright, was flaming out fast. He bounced back from that with a solid get-well win over Francisco Santana. But then came an upset split decision loss to Luis Arias followed by a 10th-round stoppage loss, due to a nasty split lip in a fight he was losing, against Jose Armando Resendiz.

Hurd has explanations and justifications for his disappointing performances: The Arias fight came a few months after the death of Hurd’s father, and the grieving son was not in the right mental space; the rust of a nearly two-year layoff showed against Resendiz.

Still, our eyes weren’t lying to us. As a thirtysomething middleweight, he wasn’t the same guy who had warred with Harrison, Trout, and Lara at junior middle in his 20s.

Away from the spotlight, he bounced back last December with a fourth-round stoppage win over little-known Tyi Edwards on a small card in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. That raised his record to 25-3 (17 KOs) and was important for Hurd, but he knows it doesn’t count for much in the court of public opinion.

He knows what the fans have been saying. He’s heard the word seen in those reader comments above, the “s” word — “shot.” He’s also heard the “r” word — “retirement.” But he isn’t deterred.

“You know, it’s people’s opinion, man,” he said. “Someone told me when I was much younger, they said, ‘You’re only good as your last fight.’ So I know it’s just an opinion, and all it takes is me to go out there and have a great performance and everyone’s opinions will change. That’s how the boxing fans are. You know, you take one loss, they look at you as if you’re no good.”

Hurd is defiant. But he isn’t delusional.

“I wake up some days feeling stiff as I don’t know what. I used to just come to the gym and hop right in the ring, man. That ain’t happening no more. I gotta stretch and get myself warmed up,” he acknowledged. “With age, your reflexes slow down a little, your reaction time isn’t the same as you picture it, you can see ‘em coming sometimes but you can’t get out of the way like you used to. Things like that happen with age. It’s a part of the game.

“So you’ve got to fight smarter.”

Helping Hurd in that quest is his new head trainer, a man who is not at all new to his corner, Andre Robin. An assistant trainer to Hurd his entire career, Robin is now running the show in the gym. He remembers a version of Hurd that, to be blunt, used to make opponents’ punches miss from time to time.

“I’m usually the type of guy to take one and give one,” Hurd said. “I don’t need to do that out there. I just need to be the one that’s giving the punches. I don’t know what it is, man. You know what’s so funny? Coming up, from the Frank Galarza fight [in 2015] on down to all my previous fights, I wasn’t the type of fighter to just go blow for blow and stand toe to toe. But I guess being such a big fighter at 154, and having all these opponents that would stand in front of me, that allowed me to switch over to a style of pressure, pressure, walk you down, pressure, pressure. And it worked so well for me.

“But coming up, I wasn’t that guy. I used to be real defensive, moving my head and things like that. I just got away from it. Gotta get back to it.”

So does that mean against Rosario, we should be on the lookout for Hurd’s Willie Pep impression? Not exactly. He said his goal is not to be a full-on technical boxer. It’s to be a boxer-puncher. He specifically singled out as his template the performance of Hamzah Sheeraz this past June against Austin “Ammo” Williams, in which Sheeraz utilized his height and reach but came forward and got the stoppage win.

And Hurd isn’t shy about giving away a part of his strategy against Rosario, because, as he said, it’s obvious anyway: “Go to the body. That’s part of the game plan, because, multiple times, he’s had trouble with that — he can’t take a punch too well to the midsection.”

Hurd is intent on making some alterations to his approach and giving himself a shot at extending his boxing career. And he’s already made major alterations to his life outside the ring: In February, he ended 33 years of bachelorhood and got married to his girlfriend of four years, Ray.

As you might imagine, it’s changed his perspective and what he’s fighting for — to a degree.

“Being married is not really too different, because she’s always been like a wife and, you know, I just put a ring on it,” he said. “But, it’s something I’ve always wanted, to be married, to start a family. I’m looking forward to having kids and providing for my family, and this just gives me a little more motivation.”

While the boxing world learned of the Rosario fight just last week, Hurd knew about it some three weeks before that. And he’s been training for it since long before that.

“I got married in February and I’ve been in the gym every day since then,” he said. “I had a fight that was canceled on me, but we’ve just kept preparing. I got a little fatigued in the Resendiz fight, after the long layoff. Now I’m in the gym full-time again, year-round.”

Reading between the lines, it seems Hurd is saying there will be no excuses this time. Either he beats Rosario on Aug. 21, or he learns something about himself that he’s resolutely hoping not to learn.

If Hurd does prevail, if he looks like a fighter who hasn’t reached the end of the line, who can still compete at a high level, he has a clear picture of where he wants to go next.

“Look, by the time I fight, my birthday will be about in a week or so, I’ll be 34,” he said. “Man, I don’t have a lot of time to be building up here. I want to get the big fights. Hopefully after this fight, I can get a shot at a title just off my name and what I’ve done in this sport, being unified champ. Danny Garcia and Lara are fighting each other [on Sept. 14], hopefully I can get the winner.”

Hurd-Lara II next year, some seven years after they engaged in what the BWAA voted the 2018 Fight of the Year, would be one of those “didn’t have that on my 2025 Bingo card” fights. But it may very soon make sense.

As Hurd knows, though, perception-wise, you’re only as good as your last fight. That means he was damned good in 2018, but hasn’t been too good very often since.

The Rosario fight gives him a chance to make his latest “last fight” one that causes boxing fans to believe in him again. And if he can’t, he’ll have to contend with the question of whether the words “last fight” now have a different meaning for him.

Eric Raskin is a veteran boxing journalist with more than 25 years of experience covering the sport for such outlets as BoxingScene, ESPN, Grantland, Playboy, Ringside Seat, and The Ring (where he served as managing editor for seven years). He also co-hosted The HBO Boxing Podcast, Showtime Boxing with Raskin & Mulvaney, The Interim Champion Boxing Podcast with Raskin & Mulvaney, and Ring Theory. He has won three first-place writing awards from the BWAA, for his work with The Ring, Grantland, and HBO. Outside boxing, he is the senior editor of CasinoReports and the author of 2014’s The Moneymaker Effect. He can be reached on X or LinkedIn, or via email at [email protected].