Xander Zayas says the other champions at 154 are going to have to “adjust” to what he does inside the ring when he faces one or more of them in the future. Zayas (22-0, 13 KOs) won the vacant WBO junior middleweight title last Saturday night, beating #2-ranked Jorge Garcia (33-5, 26 KOs) by a wide 12-round unanimous decision at Madison Square Garden Theater in New York City.
Holding and Moving Tactics
Xander states that he can make “adjustments” in every round to negate what his opponents are doing. He doesn’t give any examples of what he means, though. Against Garcia, he was mostly running and holding. There were no other adjustments he was making. He lacked power and couldn’t stand in the pocket because he doesn’t like getting hit. Xander would have two options to use.
“They’re going to have to adjust. I can make adjustments round by round, quick as possible,” said Xander Zayas to the media about what it would mean for the other champions to have to fight him.
Zayas’ Limited Skill Set
The champions won’t have much to adjust to. Zayas’s style of fighting involves holding and moving. Xander’s game is pretty simple. He has no power, and he fades after nine rounds. Using excessive clinching and running won’t work to defeat the 154-lb champions:
– Sebastian Fundora
– Bakhram Murtazaliev
– Vergil Ortiz Jr. WBC interim
– Yoenis Tellez: WBA interim
What Top Rank should do is forget about putting Zayas in any unification fights, and focus on having him milk his WBO belt for as long as possible until Jaron ‘Boots’ Ennis or Israil Madrimov becomes his mandatory. Once that happens, Top Rank can put Zayas in a unification fight in a cash-out situation against Fundora.
Other than that, it doesn’t pay off for Xander to fight any of the four champions now because he lacks the talent to beat any of them. He would likely be knocked out by all of the belt-holders at 154. You’ve got to give Top Rank’s matchmakers credit for taking a limited fighter and transforming him into a world champion.
If they had matched Zayas against the wrong guy, he’d have been weeded out. Still, they can’t protect him from the sharks at 154 forever. He will be ordered to defend against someone like Jaron Ennis, and he won’t win that fight. His 15 minutes of fame will be over.
There’s nothing in Zayas’ game that would prevent him from being taken apart and knocked out by all four of the champions at 154. He’s not going to hold or run his way to victory against them like he did against the limited Jorge Garcia. The WBO should have never ranked Garcia at #2 in the first place. Even when he beat Charles Conwell, he looked like a basic fighter. It’s just that Conwell was even more limited than he was.
“He was a tough opponent, and he wasn’t going to quit. I wasn’t going to throw everything in the seventh round, knowing that I had six or seven rounds to go. That wouldn’t be smart,” said Zander about Garcia.
Zayas would have gassed out even faster if he’d emptied his gas tank in the seventh round, trying to score a knockout. He looked exhausted by the ninth round, and that’s why he was forced to run and hold on nonstop from the tenth round. The pressure from Garcia wore him down.
Referee’s Role in Holding
“Staying patient, winning round by round, and that’s what I did. Round nine came in. He started putting his head down more, walking forward. We started grabbing him. Just don’t let him work inside. If we allowed him to work inside, it would have been a whole completely different fight, and we just frustrated him. He was frustrated at the end,” said Zayas.
Garcia was frustrated by the amount of holding that Zayas did in the fight. The referee should have policed that if he were on his job, because it was borderline cheating. When a fighter holds as much as Xander did, it’s a form of cheating.
Moving forward, Zayas will have to use other methods to win his fights, as he can’t depend on a referee who is delinquent in their duties each time he fights. Moreover, after last Saturday’s fights, Xander’s opponents will train to make him pay when he holds.
Last Updated on 07/27/2025
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