By Jake Donovan
 
It always begins as a harmless tune-up, a little something to shake off the ring rust in preparation of a guaranteed fight in the near future.

More often than not, the opponent is hand-picked. He’s well-scouted, which is to say he almost never poses a threat to win a round, much less the fight, nor does he boast punching power of any kind.

Former three-division titlist Marco Antonio Barrera was looking at that scenario heading into his fight this past Saturday. Hanging in the balance was a March showdown with 2004 Olympic Silver medalist Amir Khan, but he was already committed to a January 31 bout with John Nolasco in Mexico.

The latter was originally scheduled as the second tune-up fight in Barrera’s comeback tour. It began last November, ending a 13-month break from the ring in what was thought to be his retirement after having spent more than half of his life as a professional prizefighter.

Barrera took the fight as a sense of obligation to his countrymen, though given what was at stake, it’s quite possible that agreeing to appear at ringside would’ve given them just as much of a thrill. With a fight scheduled six weeks away, a bout with Nolasco never threatened to become anything more than a glorified sparring session; surely his fans would’ve understood if he instead opted to sit this one out.

Perhaps Nolasco believed this to be true. The Dominican featherweight never bothered to show up to the weigh-in, leaving Barrera without an opponent. A blessing in disguise if there ever was one, as he could now cut to the chase and focus solely on March 14.

Instead, his handlers tempted fate and sought a late replacement. The end result was a cut that may now chase away what is being packaged as a huge event in the UK.

The gentleman on the delivering end of the bad news was Freudis Rojas, a Cuban clubfighter now based out of Las Vegas. He came into the bout boasting a record of 1-7-1, having lost his last five and with all of his pro fights having taken place in the United States. What he was doing in Mexico was anyone’s guess, but apparently fit the uniform well enough to fill in as an opponent for Barrera.

Someone must’ve failed to remind Rojas of his role, which was to entertain but not get in the way of Barrera winning and escape unscathed. The Cuban remembered to lose, which came about via disqualification after an intentional head butt left Barrera with an irreparable cut over his left eye.

Officials have yet to determine if the cut is severe enough to keep the former lineal featherweight king out of the gym long enough to postpone the March 14 date. Whether or not there’s good news to be had is almost irrelevant, as the lesson Barrera learned – or should’ve learned – was that there was no need to even sweat this out in the first place.

Sadly, it’s a lesson in which those in the sport continue to learn the hard way, rather than reviewing its own history.

Former lower weight class rulers Danny Romero and Johnny Tapia developed a heated rivalry during the mid 1990’s, with the two on a collision course longer than anyone could remember. Their long-anticipated meet up came in the form of a junior bantamweight unification match in 1997.

The bout turned out to be a terrific, tightly contested boxing match won by Tapia, but still one that could’ve come at least a year or two prior.

The foundation for the rivalry was laid in 1995. Tapia picked up alphabet titlist at junior bantamweight, while then 20-year old Romero became the first American in 60 years to capture a portion of the flyweight title. The two were treated as separate but equal, staying busy on separately promoted Top Rank cards while becoming a household name.

Plans called for a twinbill appearance on a low-budget pay-per-view shortly before Halloween, designed to pair the two together possibly by year’s end should the two emerge victorious.

Romero never even made it to the doubleheader, instead opting for what was thought to be a quick win against hard-hitting journeyman Willy Salazar in September 1995. The bout aired on ESPN, one night before Tapia appeared on the Oscar de la Hoya-Genaro Hernandez undercard against the much lighter-hitting Jesse Miranda.

Tapia prevailed victorious; Romero wound up in the fight of his life. The New Mexico slugger suffered an orbital bone fracture in the second round of a fight that he was otherwise winning, until it was determined that he could no longer continue due to the injury.

Rather than striking while the iron was hot, Romero was instead forced to rebuild. He came back strong in 2006, moving up in weight and capturing a junior bantamweight belt with a two-round, four-knockdown wipeout of Harold Grey to accentuate a Comeback of the Year-worthy campaign.

The win helped put in motion long-awaited plans for a Tapia grudge match, one in which he would fall just short on the scorecards after 12 spirited rounds. Though having just turned 23 at the time of the fight, Romero would’ve greater benefited from an earlier collision with his Albuquerque rival.

Romero might’ve developed into a more patient fighter over those two years, but it also gave Tapia time to hone his craft and find himself as a boxer. Romero caught Tapia at the pinnacle of his career, which wouldn’t have been the case had he instead stuck to the original script rather than squeeze in that one extra fight.

Sometimes an untimely cut works in your favor. Oscar de la Hoya experienced this type of luck late in 1998. A rematch with Julio Cesar Chavez proved tougher and bloodier than expected. He came out victorious, forcing the Mexican legend to quit on his stool after eight rounds, but the cuts and swelling on his multi-million dollar grill put at serious risk a pending pay-per-view showdown with Ike Quartey two months later.

The scheduling of the two fights so close to one another sounded like a too-good-to-be-true idea to begin with, but was a knee jerk reaction to the criticism that came with his going through with a Chavez rematch in the first place.

Following his lineal welterweight title win over Pernell Whitaker, de la Hoya made four defenses, mostly against soft competition. The closest he came to a threatening defense was his December 1997 meet with Wilfredo Rivera. Few bought into de la Hoya’s sales pitch that the Chavez rematch was “personal” at which point, the unification match with Quartey was booked for two months later.

The latter fight wound up getting pushed back three months to give de la Hoya’s wounds time to heal. There was good news and bad news to this development. The upside was that Quartey would be 16 months inactive by fight night; the bad news was, there was no longer a second title at stake, as the Ghanaian warrior was stripped for going too long without defending against a mandatory.

De la Hoya won the bout by a razor-thin decision that’s still debated to this very day. Some respect came from the evening; both fighters climbed off of the canvas in the sixth, and de la Hoya, believing his he was down after eleven rounds, went for broke in the 12th, dropping Quartey and having him nearly out on his feet before running out of the gas and settling for the split decision.

But to many, the win was over a lesser version of Quartey, one who’d been away from the ring for more than a year. It was one of many wins on de la Hoya’s resume where his detractors insist came as a result of catching the right opponent at the right time, and with just a little less at stake.

Had the Chavez rematch never occurred, de la Hoya could’ve went straight to Quartey, and with his September ’99 bout with Felix Trinidad being for all of the marbles, without any other pretenders trying to stake their claim in the welterweight throne.

It could be argued that the injuries suffered in the tune-up disguised as a Chavez grudge rematch helped more than It hurt his career. But he could’ve made things a lot easier on himself had he just went straight to the Quartey fight, and scrapped the Chavez return go altogether. Fans would’ve understood; so few were expecting even the threat of an upset to ever enter the equation.

For the moment, Barrera has been given the green light to proceed with the Khan fight, now just six weeks away. It’s possible that those plans stick, and we see the modern day Mexican legend in a British ring come March. It’s also possible that Barrera’s first day back in the gym following last weekend’s fight suggest that his skin needs more time to heal, thus postponing a fight in which 15,000 tickets have already been sold.

If the latter occurs and a delay occurs, the extra wait can only benefit Khan. Barrera’s to the point where we’ve long ago seen the best of him. If there’s one great fight left in him, it will come now rather than later, while Khan would get to put a couple of more months between the present and his lone loss, a crushing first round knockout at the hands of Breidis Prescott.

Simply put, Barrera was always better off just cutting to the chase, than allowing a cut to raise the threat of chasing him away from catching a young lion at the perfect time in both of their careers.
  
Jake Donovan is a voting member of the Boxing Writers Association of America. Comments/questions can be submitted to JakeNDaBox@gmail.com .