Popular, Marketable and Fearless, Omar Figueroa Is Everything PBC Needs in a Boxer

It was the greatest fight I had ever seen—in person anyway. The two combatants, Omar Figueroa and Nihito Arakawa, combined to throw 760 punches that night, a whopping 94 percent of them power shots.

You didn’t read that wrong.

According to CompuBox, 716 of the 760 punches thrown when Figueroa outlasted Arakawa over 12 bloody rounds were power punches. The victor, Figueroa, landed 450 of them, a gaudy total that ranks No. 4 all-time for all weight classes in CompuBox’s history.

Boxing is never the Rocky fight scene montages you see at the movies. Except this time it was.

“I’m just passionate,” Figueroa told Bleacher Report. “I love what I do, and it’s like I said that night, it was an honor and a privilege to be in a fight like that and have my counterpart enjoy it as much as I did.”

No, Omar. It was our honor and privilege to watch it.

Darren Abate/Associated Press

Figueroa, a former lightweight titleholder, is undefeated and just now entering the prime years of his fighting career. The 26-year-old is one of boxing’s real-life action heroes. In fact, if you’re hoping Al Haymon’s Premier Boxing Champions series is in it for the long haul, your best course of action would be to start rooting for Figueroa to live up to his incredible potential.

Now fighting at 140 pounds, Figueroa is a highly skilled mauler with elite talent and a penchant for creating combustible situations on fight night. In fact, he loves it. Where some fighters today want to do everything in their power to avoid dangerous and destructive opponents, Figueroa wants to rush into them headfirst.

He’s brave. He’s marketable. He’s truly something special.  

Let’s face it. PBC needs a guy like that, too. For all the talk of how good it is to see boxing back on network television, it’s much more important to the longevity of such that the audience actually likes what it sees when it comes across the now all-too-foreign sight of professional boxing while flipping through the channels.

PBC has brought much attention to the sport of boxing over the last year, but there haven’t been many top-level slugfests so far, and Figueroa is the man who can deliver them.

Figueroa ate 280 punches against Arakawa in 2013. He was bloody and swollen and hurt, and at the end of every round he was smiling. This was a man in his element. This was his vocation fully actualized.

“We were doing what we love, and we were enjoying ourselves inside the ring. It was just what boxing should be. I loved it. It was great. It’s just what I love to do.”

Here’s the most intriguing part: Figueroa said we haven’t even seen the best version of him as a fighter yet. Sure, many fighters say stuff like that when they talk to the media, but I think Figueroa really means it.

That night he clashed with Arakawa? That legendary undercard bout so good that it even grabbed the attention of Grantland’s Jay Caspian Kang?

Figueroa killed himself making weight for that fight. He went into it gaunt and drained.

“I don’t know how I made it so long in that weight class. I was fighting at 141 pounds [six pounds over the lightweight limit] when I was in the amateurs during my junior year of high school. So I went down to 135 for the pros, and now I look back and I think, how the hell did I do that? How did I manage 135 for so long when my body was so gaunt?”

Figueroa won’t have to worry as much on Saturday night when he faces Antonio DeMarco on NBC. The bout will be contested at 140 pounds, the division in which Figueroa expects to spend the rest of his career.

“I feel a million times stronger fighting at 140. It’s a perfect fit,” he said.

Kin Cheung/Associated Press/Associated Press

DeMarco is a tough customer, but he’s no worldbeater. If Figueroa hopes to compete with the very best fighters in the junior welterweight division, especially PBC commodities like Adrien Broner and Rances Barthelemy, he won’t just need to win the fight. He’ll need to make a statement.

He’s done that before. Figueroa’s spirited performance with and against Arakawa in 2013 is exactly the type of fight PBC could use right about now. And the fighter, a likable and marketable sort who excels at creating action and smiles as he does it, is the kind of figurehead its roster needs, too.

Figueroa and PBC seem perfect together. Have the stars truly aligned?

Only time will tell. But while we wait to see it, here’s Figueroa in a nutshell: When asked if a fight against the enigmatic Broner was the type of high-profile gig he’d like next, it was almost as if he hadn’t even considered who or what might be coming around the corner.

Get it? Like other great action stars from boxing’s past, he is a man who lives completely in the moment. He’s always focused on what he’s doing right this second.

“Honestly, I don’t care who I fight next. It could be Broner. It could be anyone. I’m down.”

Do you doubt it?

Unless otherwise noted, all quotes were obtained firsthand.