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Brian Viloria makes ring return tomorrow in Texas

Very few people know that Brian Viloria, former three-time world boxing champion, has a fight tomorrow in Texas. After losing his unified WBA and WBO flyweight titles to Juan Francisco Estrada in April last year, Viloria fell off the radar again.

“Yeah, y’ know, it was a close fight last year and we were waiting to see if we could get another fight at the end of last year,” he said in an interview with Max Boxing’s Steve Kim. “But the game is pretty fickle; you’re as good as your last fight in this sport. So you have to look great in almost every fight in order for you to be on top of the game.”

At 33 years of age, Viloria’s career is nearing its inevitable end. But the Filipino-American is working hard to delay it.

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Tomorrow Viloria (32-4-0, 19 knockouts) will end his hiatus as he will be fighting a virtual unknown in Juan Herrera (9-7-0, 4 KOs) of Puerto Rico. It’s considered as a tune-up match for the former light flyweight and flyweight champion of the world as his names is already penciled for Top Rank’s fight card in Macau this May, which will be headlined by the featherweight bout between Nonito Donaire and Simpiwe Vetyeka.

“I know I wanted to rest a little bit. That whole run I was in and bunch of wars with Segura, ‘Tyson’ Marquez and then that fight with Estrada. So I wanted to rest a little bit - but I didn’t know I was going to rest that long,” Viloria said in the same interview. “I was supposed to fight earlier this year but that didn’t happen, so I just have to keep myself in shape, get myself rolling and just look for the next opportunity.”

Viloria’s upcoming fight against Herrera as “trap fight”  written all over it. The Fil-Am knows he has nothing to gain but a workout against the Puerto Rican while his much younger foe could turn the tide on his professional boxing career by beating a former world champion.

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In the weigh-in held earlier, Viloria tipped the scales at 113 pounds while Herrera was at 112. Since it is a non-title fight, Viloria’s extra pound over the flyweight limit was acceptable.

People gave up on Viloria after his string of loses to Omar Nino Romero and Edgar Sosa. But he changed their minds by stopping Ulises Solis for the IBF light flyweight title. They gave on Viloria again when he ran out of gas and suffered the word defeat of his career against Carlos Tamara. But again Viloria mounted a comeback anchored on wins over Romero, Julio Cesar Miranda, Giovani Segura, and Hernan Marquez.

Boxing fans are again ready to give up on Viloria after he lost to Estrada but the diminutive Ilocos native has proven time and again that he has the ability to bounce back from losses.

“That’s one of the fights [rematch with Estrada] that I wanted to happen already for my next fight and not this tune-up. But obviously [Estrada’s] camp didn’t want to go up against me, saying that they wanted to take easier fights before getting to me again,” Viloria said. “So that’s what they told us and I can only do so much. So I just try to stay in the gym, keep myself busy and hopefully, that rematch comes.”