LAS VEGAS – Richard Torrez Jnr is usually smiling and jovial before his fights. His demeanor, however, seemed different for his upcoming fight against Guido Vianello.

Torrez will headline Saturday’s fight card at Pearl Concert Theater at Palms Casino Resort in Las Vegas. He’ll meet Vianello in a 10-round heavyweight clash, his most distinguished opponent to date.

Torrez, 12-0 (11 KOs), last fought in December, when he stopped Isaac Munoz Gutierrez in December. He has been professional this week, but not his typical happy-go-lucky self. When asked about his focus on the fight, he responded:

“I think the anticipation and just the quality of opponent that I've been preparing and not just physically, but also on the mental side,” Torrez told BoxingScene. “Fighting a fellow Olympian, a guy that has made a mark in the pros is big. I'm excited and so there's nothing else to do but focus.”

Torrez, a 25-year-old who hails from Tulare, California, also explained the preparation isn’t different from any other fight. 

“I prepare for every fight like it's my hardest fight, because every fight I have is my toughest fight and the most challenging fight up to date,” Torrez said. “I'm just ready and I feel the nerves are gone because preparation kills the nerves.”

Torrez elaborated that pre-fight nerves are not always a bad thing. 

“I think that nerves are a part of the game; instead of trying to run away from the nerves, I embrace them and the pressure,” Torrez said. “It is a little bit easier to handle and allows you to push yourself further.”

Vianello, 13-2-1 (11 KOs), a 6ft 6ins heavyweight, has a 4ins height advantage over him. Torrez, an inch shorter than Oleksandr Usyk, is perceived as an undersized heavyweight. This also discounts the fact that Torrez, an Olympic silver medalist in 2020, has won at every level of heavyweight competition in the amateurs before his professional debut.

“I fought a 6ft 8ins guy from the Netherlands. I fought a 6ft 6ins dude from Jamaica. I fought Bakhodir Jalolov twice,” Torrez said. “There's a lot of experience I could draw on for this fight. I'm used to finding the bigger guys and that gives me a little bit of comfort in this fight, because I know the style that I'm facing and I'm excited to show what the small guys offer.”

Torrez turned professional in 2022. Now three years later, he is the top of the bill, in a heavyweight division that could be reinventing itself soon, as many of the top contenders are approaching their mid-to-late 30s. Vianello, a 30-year-old from Rome, Italy, is looking to stop that. 

“I do think [this fight is] something different,” Torrez said. “I've never had my face on the side of a hotel. I still remember being in the Olympics in the locker room with no one around, because of COVID-19 and turning over my gloves and seeing the [Olympic] rings on them and thinking,  this is something special. This fight gives me a similar feeling to that.”