By Keith Idec

Jessie Vargas realizes he wasted entirely too many opportunities during his loss to Timothy Bradley.

By the time Vargas finally landed a right hand he had tried setting up several times earlier in their 12-round bout, it was too late. It obviously didn’t help that referee Pat Russell stopped their fight eight seconds early, after Vargas hurt Bradley badly with 21 seconds left in the 12th round.

But Vargas doesn’t just blame his loss on Russell mistaking the 10-second warning for the final bell June 27 in Carson, California. The Las Vegas native knows he’s largely responsible for his unanimous-decision defeat to Bradley (33-1-1, 13 KOs, 1 NC) in their fight for the interim WBO welterweight title.

The 26-year-old Vargas (26-1, 9 KOs), who lost by large margins on two of three scorecards against Bradley (117-111, 116-112, 115-112), insists he won’t make the same mistake when he boxes Brooklyn’s Sadam Ali (22-0, 13 KOs) on Saturday night. They’ll fight for the vacant WBO welterweight title in the opener of HBO’s “Boxing After Dark” telecast (10 p.m. ET) from D.C. Armory in Washington, D.C.

“It sparked a fire,” Vargas said of his loss to Bradley on a recent conference call. “I’m coming back with rage into this fight. I have that fire that I just wanna destroy any opponent that’s in front of me, and not wait until the last round or not let any second, any minute of the fight just go. I’m planning on fighting the entire fight and I’ve prepared to do so. And that’s what matters. That’s what I learned from that fight, and I just plan to stay busy.”

Keith Idec covers boxing for The Record and Herald News, of Woodland Park, N.J., and krikya360.com. He can be reached on Twitter @Idecboxing.