Eddie Hearn Says Diego Pacheco Will Fight A Minimum Of Three Times In 2024, Hopes To Build Him In LA
- Diego Pacheco Headlined In The US For The First Time Last Night
- He Scored A Sensational 9th-round KO Of Marcelo Coceres
- Promoter Eddie Hearn Believes Pacheco Will Be A Big Star In US Boxing
Rising super middleweight star Diego Pacheco scored a stunning 9th-round knockout of Argentine Marcelo Coceres yesterday.
The American chose to box Coceres from the beginning, winning easily and putting rounds in the bank.
However, Coceres had a good spell from rounds 5-7 catching Pacheco numerous times with the left hook and exposing a real flaw in Pacheco’s defence.
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The 22-year-old came back nicely in round eight and changed the strategy from boxing to fighting, pushing Coceres back and unleashing combinations on him.
It was clear that the power was having a significant impact on him and the end was near and that came just one round later when Pacheco landed an eye-catching right uppercut that floored Coceres, who chose not to get up for more punishment.
Pacheco headlined for the third time as a professional and the first time in the US. He did so in front of an energetic home crowd at the YouTube Theatre in Los Angeles live on DAZN.
Many experts within the game are picking the Jose Benavidez Sr-trained fighter to become a future star of the sport and yesterday night would’ve gone a long way in that journey but there is the understanding that Matchroom/DAZN still have a job to do on Pacheco’s profile to get to that point.
Eddie Hearn Talks Next Steps For Diego Pacheco
Promoter Eddie Hearn spoke to the media in the aftermath of Pacheco’s win about what 2024 could look like for him.
“Building nicely here, that was his first fight in Los Angeles. We had a good crowd tonight, room for improvement.”
“You got a young American fighter, a Hispanic/Mexican background who can really fight, who can punch and is only 22 years old.”
DAZN’s subscriber base is understood to be largely Hispanic due to Golden Boy’s stable of fighters and Canelo Alvarez so Pacheco would be an ideal fitting to be one of the future stars for DAZN.
“(The YouTube Theatre) is a really nice home for him, there’s another tier that we can open. We can probably get it to 3.5k thousand, next time it will be sold out then you just keep on going from there.”
Hearn believes the YouTube Theatre will be the home for Pacheco fights at least for the next year or so, hoping to fill up the 6,000-capacity venue in the next year or so.
“We still got to build the story after tonight, we got to get him out more. We got to get him in front of the media and we got to get people talking.”
Pacheco hasn’t really done a plethora of media in his career so far and there has been limited behind-the-scenes storytelling of his journey – one thing Matchroom will have to invest in 2024.
“He must box three times next year, four would be nice but definitely three.”
The promoter confirmed that Pacheco would return in the spring likely around April time.
Images: Ed Mulholland/Matchroom Boxing