With late father's voice in his mind, Jarrett Hurd mounts comeback
Former unified junior middleweight champion promises to return to all-out pressure style in Showtime co-feature on Saturday night
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From the time Jarrett Hurd burst onto the world boxing scene in 2015 to the loss of the unified junior middleweight title in mid-2019 he was a relentless force and one of the sport’s most exciting fighters.
He so brutally overwhelmed opponents with non-stop punching and intense pressure that they eventually wilted and got knocked out, including Tony Harrison to claim the IBF title and former titleholder Austin Trout, who has lost to Canelo Alvarez and Jermell and Jermall Charlo but has still only been stopped by Hurd.
The only opponent during Hurd’s memorable seven-fight stretch to make it to the final bell was Erislandy Lara, but Hurd knocked him down in the final round, which was the difference in a split decision victory to unify the IBF and WBA titles in the 2018 fight of the year.
But since Hurd followed up that win by knocking out Jason Welborn in the fourth round in December 2018, he has struggled and had long layoffs.
After he lost his most recent fight, which was by upset split decision in his middleweight debut against Luis Arias in June 2021, Hurd thought he was done with boxing.
“I wasn’t going to come back,” Hurd told Fight Freaks Unite this week.
Hurd eventually had a change of heart and is now on the comeback trail. He will make his return against Jose Armando Resendiz in a 10-round middleweight bout that is the co-feature on the tripleheader topped by the vacant WBC interim featherweight title bout between Brandon Figueroa and Mark Magsayo on Saturday (Showtime, 9 p.m. ET) at Toyota Arena in Ontario, California.
Hurd’s decision came one night last spring. He had been the phone with good friend Emanuel Savoy, a boxing trainer, after a long stretch of playing video games. Savoy questioned Hurd about what he was doing with his life and invoked the memory of Hurd’s father, the late Fred Hurd Sr., who died from Covid-19 at age 63 in March 2021.
