There was a time when Yokasta Valle considered that her best chance at unification would come down the road against Seniesa Estrada.
It was a sacrifice she was willing to make, with the primary goal of adding another title to her collection. The latter has materialized for Valle, who is aiming to win the WBO strawweight title and defend her IBF crown in her showdown with Vietnam’s Thi Thu Nhi Nguyen (5-0, 1KO). The fight headlines a DAZN show on Thursday, live from Cuidad Deportiva Heiner Ugalde in San Jose, Costa Rica.
“I am happy for this opportunity. All I ever wanted was to have a unification fight,” Valle told BoxingScene.com. “Now we have the opportunity to fight another champion. She wanted to fight Seniesa Estrada but he didn’t need her. I just needed to fight another champion and now we have that opportunity.”
Valle (25-2, 9KOs) will attempt the sixth IBF title defense she has had since an August 2019 split decision win over Joana Pastrana in Marbella, Spain. The 30-year-old Costa Rican, originally from Nicaragua before moving in with her family at age seven, has enjoyed four of her five title defenses on her home turf, along with two non-title fights during that span.
Valle made an effort last summer to track down Estrada in hopes of securing a divisional superfight. It never worked, though it hasn’t slowed his career down at all. Valle will fight for the fifth time in thirteen months when she enters the ring on Thursday, including her third fight of 2022. The most recent marked her debut in the United States, earning a ten-round shutout against Lorraine Villalobos in a last-minute opportunity to appear on a Golden Boy Promotions show on June 11 in Anaheim, signing with the Los Angeles-based team two days later.
The first official fight under that deal marks a historic moment. His fight against Nguyen marks the first title unification fight to take place in Costa Rica. The hope is that he will not be the last, although Valle will continue to be willing to travel anywhere in the world to make more history.
“I want to unify all four belts and win the Ring Magazine championship,” Valle promised. “Nobody has won that before in this weight division. Once I can achieve that goal, we will look to move up in weight and become a multi-division champion.
“For now, I feel very comfortable at strawweight and I have unfinished business here.”
Jake Donovan is a senior writer for BoxingScene.com. Twitter: @JakeNDaBox
