Oscar Valdez’s thunderous knockout of Miguel Berchelt stunned the boxing world

Have we already seen the knockout of the year?

Oscar Valdez stopped Miguel Berchelt with a thunderous knockout with one second left in Round 10 of their junior lightweight bout Saturday night.

Valdez, a 30-year-old from Mexico, was an underdog but bothered Berchelt, his 29-year old countryman, all night with his quickness and a relentless barrage of left hooks and jabs to claim the WBC super featherweight belt at the MGM Grand Conference Center in Las Vegas.

Valdez landed 50 more punches that Berchelt (149 to 99) and it showed, as many on Twitter were calling for the fight to be stopped before the final sequence that left Valdez — who had lost only one pro fight, in 2014 — sprawled on the mat.

There’s that left hand again.

Berchelt stayed down on the canvas for several frightening minutes before being taken to a nearby hospital. A CT scan reportedly came back clear and he was expected to be released, according to his camp.

We’re early in the year, obviously, but the Twitter hype train immediately dubbed this the knockout of the year. I’m not sure that we should be giving that title to a punch thrown at a clearly staggered fighter, but let’s look at some angles of this anyway.

Here’s my favorite one. Slow motion makes you realize exactly how Valdez won against the bigger fighter:

Valdez, who was raised in Arizona, previously held the WBO featherweight title and is a two-time Olympian. His win moves him to 29-0 with 23 knockouts and sets up a potential fight with former American Olympian Shakur Stevenson, who won Silver in Rio and is 15-0 in his professional career.

Stevenson was in attendance last night:

And had one clear takeaway from that stunning win:

Valdez heard that Stevenson wanted to fight and said, “Let’s do it. I just want to keep on fighting and give the fans what they want.”