Oscar Collazo has in short order built a lofty reputation as perhaps the mightiest of mites in boxing, a diminutive destroyer of worlds and the tiny torchbearer of the sport’s most overlooked weight divisions.

 

Indeed, at first glance, even Collazo’s work against strawweight competition might appear to be no big deal: He is 11-0 with eight knockouts – encouraging numbers for a prospect, sure, but typically nothing more than a strong start by professional boxing standards.

 

Yet very little about Collazo can be characterized as typical – including the fact that, well, he’s very little. A New Jersey-born Puerto Rico resident, Collazo, at 28, is just ramping up in the sport at an age when many fighters operating in the lightest weight classes are winding down. A relentless southpaw, Collazo contested for – and won – a world title in just his seventh fight, the commencement of a John Wick-like tear of inflicting maximum damage on the world’s best minimumweights.

 

The carnage has been nothing short of colossal: In May 2023, Collazo forced Melvin Jerusalem to quit on his stool and hand over his belt. Three months later, in Collazo’s first defense, he induced another no mas, this time from Garen Diagan. Two more stoppages and three defenses later – including, most recently, a knock-around of previously undefeated Knockout CP Freshmart last November – and Collazo, by all rights, should be one of the biggest stories in boxing.

 

But that’s not how this works. Even as Collazo enters his fifth defense Saturday against Edwin Cano Hernandez, it isn’t as a headliner framed by the neon glow of Las Vegas but as a co-main fighter on a mid-level card in Cancun, Mexico. Nothing wrong with that, of course, but Collazo wants more for himself – and for his fellow bijou boxers.

 

“I want to send a message to all the fans who say that the lower weight divisions are not very important, that we’re not worth it, that no one wants to see us: I think we’re going to make a difference,” Collazo said via interpreter in Thursday’s fight-week press conference. “I want to make that difference, [to prove] that we are worth it.”

 

Believe it or not, he has some big shoes to fill. Two-division titleholder Bam Rodriguez, who debuted as a strawweight in 2017, had been boxing’s latest Lilliputian wrecking ball – and the rare little-man-on-the-big-stage success story. He has wowed audiences and sold shows much earlier in his career than pint-sized progenitors Roman Gonzalez and Juan Francisco Estrada, who helped pave the narrow path before him. And give a nod to undisputed featherweight champion and patron saint of short kings everywhere Naoya Inoue, who began his career at junior flyweight and today may be the pound-for-pound greatest fighter in the world.

 

But no modern fighter has done more to make the compact cool than Nonito Donaire. Starting with a 2007 upset of unified flyweight titleholder Vic Darchinyan, carrying through his 2011 Knockout of the Year destruction of Fernando Montiel and pushing well past his years as an HBO Boxing fixture – and, for that matter, the existence of HBO Boxing – four-division champion Donaire has authored more massive moments on behalf of petite prizefighters than any other in the past 20 years.

 

And what are Donaire’s thoughts on Collazo, the man on the far right of the evolutionary chart of elfin boxers?

 

“He's one of those tough kids, man,” Donaire said, “that tough kid from Puerto Rico – and he’s got power.

 

“I think it's a matter of time, as long as Oscar gets all of the knockouts like he's been doing, I think he’ll get the attention. I think it's great that people are starting to notice the little guys a little bit more. When I was fighting, they noticed me a lot, because I knock guys out or I make it quite exciting. So I think what’s developing is going in a good direction.”

 

Jason Langendorf is the former Boxing Editor of ESPN.com, was a contributor to Ringside Seat and the Queensberry Rules, and has written about boxing for Vice, The Guardian, Chicago Sun-Times and other publications. A member of the Boxing Writers Association of America, he can be found at LinkedIn and followed on X and Bluesky.