Jessie Vargas Shifts Focus To Liam Smith Fight On Undercard Of Taylor-Serrano

Jessie Vargas is sticking to one of his career pursuits for now.

And that pursuit is boxing, where he’s taking on Liam Smith, a former WBO junior middleweight champion, on the undercard of the historic Katie Taylor vs Amanda Serrano fight on Saturday at Madison Square Garden.

The decision to go forward with the fight – that’s been postponed for more than two months due to Vargas testing positive for Covid-19 – forced him to suspend his political campaign to become Nevada’s 4th Congressional District.

“We really wanted to do both, I wanted to proudly represent my community in Congress,” Vargas told Boxing Scene.

“We had to suspend our campaign but I will always be a community leader, I will never stop fighting for my people.”

Vargas (29-3-2, 11 KOs) is coming off a loss against Mikey Garcia by unanimous decision from February 2020.

Before the Covid-19 pandemic temporarily freezing the world, Vargas was the WBA regular and IBO super lightweight champion in 2014 and then, in 2016, he became the WBO welterweight champion.

Smith (30-3-1, 17 KOs), the older brother of Callum Smith, is coming into the fight with a victory against Anthony Fowler by TKO in the eighth round. He previously held the light middleweight title from 2015 to 2016.

“Once the date was pushed out further and further, we made the decision to withdraw from the race and just have a full training camp for this fight with no distractions,” he added.

“I plan to become a three-division world champion.”