by David P. Greisman
Photo © Sumio Yamada/Sycuan Ringside Promotions
They come to ballrooms, filing in and taking their seats under expensive chandeliers, filling the air with cheap cigar smoke and roars of approval as the palookas and pugs pound away. They travel to casinos, ignoring the slot machines in favor of another form of armed combat, gambling that the money they’ve spent will pay off, that the fighters will entertain, will go all-in by going all out.
They journeyed, Saturday, to the Dodge Arena in Hidalgo, Texas, a small but wise crowd of approximately 3,500 people who chose to see world-class action firsthand on a night when, nearly 1,500 miles away, a beloved warrior in Erik Morales made one last stand after an action-filled career. They would not be disappointed.
Morales was a Mexican franchise, a titlist in three weight classes looking to join select company by capturing his fourth. He was a pay-per-view headliner, a respected veteran who had brought attention to the 122-pound division and beyond, one-half of memorable trilogies with Marco Antonio Barrera and Manny Pacquiao.
Rafael Marquez and Israel Vazquez, by comparison, had long labored in the shadows of their more famous countrymen. While Morales and Barrera built legends, Marquez and Vazquez compiled ledgers – Marquez punching his way to the bantamweight peak, Vazquez eventually working his way toward the top of the junior featherweights.
Their first collision produced fireworks while it lasted, seven delightful rounds in March that saw each man demonstrate the full extent of his offensive capabilities.
It ended early.
The opening heat had seen Marquez bloody Vazquez’ nose with an uppercut, setting the stage for the fight’s conclusion. The injury was compounded in the fifth, when Marquez doubled his jab and jammed it into the center of Vazquez’ face, the pain forcing Vazquez to turn his back completely and move toward the ropes. Between rounds, Vazquez complained about his nose to then-trainer Freddie Roach. Roach asked Vazquez if he wanted to quit, but Vazquez wanted to continue.
In the seventh, however, Vazquez – who was having difficulty breathing due to what doctors would later say were blood clots and damaged cartilage – dug deep and threw his patented left hook upstairs. Marquez took it, though and kept coming, jabbing for much of the round and trading with Vazquez at the bell. In the corner, Vazquez told Roach that he couldn’t breathe, answering affirmatively when Roach again asked if he wanted the fight stopped. Vazquez would take the loss then in the hopes of coming back with a victory later in the inevitable rematch.
He got his wish.
Marquez and Vazquez picked up where they left off – standing in close range, punishing each other with powerful punches and pinpoint accuracy. In a sport where, somehow, there were people pessimistic enough to decry the amazing May 2002 war between Arturo Gatti and Micky Ward as an unskilled slugfest, Marquez and Vazquez made sure to show that a brutal brawl could come from the sweetest science.
First, there was the chemistry: Marquez and Vazquez meshed well in the ring, neither one wanting to take a step back or a moment off. Like Gatti and Ward, Corrales and Castillo, and Barrera and Morales, no second would be wasted and no punch would go unanswered. This duo, in combination, was combustible.
Then there was the biology: Both men had trained their bodies not only to dish out, but to take it, too. Each was hell-bent on harming the other at all costs, through any pain, for however long it took.
It took six rounds.
The physics: Vazquez floored Marquez with a left hook about 20 seconds into what would be the final stanza. Marquez got up to find Vazquez, who had cuts above both of his eyes, looking to end the bout before the doctors could do it for him. Marquez was wobbled and cut below his right eye, but he was hanging on, attempting to bring about one more shift in momentum.
It ended early.
Referee Guadalupe Garcia erred on the side of caution, waving things off before the round’s halfway point. Vazquez had his revenge, and in the process he and Marquez had formed both a friendship and a rivalry.
Like Gatti and Ward doing their post-fight interviews together, like Corrales and Castillo laughing at their rematch press conference as the latter presented the former with a basket full of mouthpieces, Vazquez and Marquez stood in front of the cameras, arms around each other, holding out three fingers.
A trilogy.
They will come for the rubber match, assembling around the squared circle to see two junior featherweights pick up a tradition of great fights in the division, a trend carried on in recent years by Morales and Barrera and by Somsak Sithchatchawal and Mahyar Monshipour. It will end when it ends, yet it will also start in the same manner as the previous two – with sweet science and brutal brawling.
The 10 Count
1. On the undercard, Celestino Caballero struggled with former junior bantamweight and bantamweight contender Jorge Lacierva but ultimately retained his World Boxing Association 122-pound belt with a unanimous decision victory.
Caballero has been the mostly forgotten dark horse of the division, having given Daniel Ponce De Leon his only defeat and having stopped Somsak Sithchatchawal in October of last year. His ability to drain a nearly six-foot frame down to the junior featherweight limit makes him an imposing challenge, a risk that, when combined with a lack of marketability and the eventual Vazquez-Marquez rubber match, leaves him waiting on the sideline once again.
2. Meanwhile in Chicago, Erik Morales’ fight with lightweight titlist David Diaz ended with the second-best possible result for “El Terrible” – a competitive loss that saw the former three-division titlist hold his own in defeat, a final appearance far less painful to watch than those of Diego Corrales and Arturo Gatti.
After coming up short on the judges’ scorecards, Morales announced his retirement, a wise choice considering the difficulty that the one-time junior featherweight reportedly had cutting to 135 pounds. The fighters at lightweight are too big and too strong for someone so worn down after a long career, and Morales loses nothing by sitting around and waiting the five years for his Hall of Fame induction.
3. On the undercard to Diaz-Morales, junior flyweight titlist Ulises Solis got a major gut check against Rodel Mayol, getting dropped by the Filipino challenger in the sixth (the referee wrongly called it a slip) but battling back to stop Mayol two rounds later with a fantastic one-two combination.
Solis is 5-0-1 in his last six fights, his wins coming over Mayol, former 108-pound titlists Will Grigsby (twice) and Eric Ortiz and former minimumweight titlist Jose Antonio Aguirre, and his draw being with the undefeated Omar Salado. Solis, if he’s wise, should angle now for a crack at the winner of the upcoming Hugo Cazares-Ivan Calderon showdown.
4. Bad Night for Referees, part one: The third man in the ring for Caballero-Lacierva was Laurence Cole, who, as the Showtime commentators amusingly informed us, initially refused to wear a microphone while working the fight.
Cole was suspended in January for an incident during November’s Juan Manuel Marquez-Jimrex Jaca featherweight bout. In that bout’s eighth round, an accidental head butt opened up a cut on Marquez’ face near where another clash of heads had done damage earlier. Shortly afterward, Cole put his hand over his microphone and informed Marquez that he was ahead on the scorecards. Marquez ignored the implication that he could say he was unable to continue and take a technical decision, rallying to knock out Jaca in the ninth.
Cole, who admitted to and apologized for his mistake, was fined $500 by Texas officials and given a three-month suspension that was followed by a three-month probationary period.
5. Bad Night for Referees, part two: The third round of a fight in Tokyo Saturday saw referee Ukrid Sarasas taste canvas after moving in to separate junior welterweights Yasuhiro Kondo and Yoshihiro Kamegai, according to boxing journalist/matchmaker/manager Joe Koizumi. It was Kondo who landed a left hook to the face of Sarasas, and the referee reportedly did his best Zab Judah impression while attempting to recover.
Kamegai ultimately avenged Sarasas, stopping Kondo in the final seconds of the fourth round.
6. To think, after all these years, that Norman Stone could’ve lowered his blood pressure and saved us all some auditory aggravation just by telling John Ruiz to kayo the third man in the ring. Of course, knowing Ruiz, he probably would have just jabbed referee Randy Neumann and then put him in a headlock.
7. Boxers Behaving Badly: Former lightweight and junior middleweight titlist Vinny Pazienza was charged last week with domestic simple assault and domestic disorderly conduct following an alleged late July incident involving his girlfriend, according to The Providence Journal (via BoxingScene’s own Mark Vester).
Pazienza was also arrested Feb. 23 and charged with drunken driving after police in Warwick, R.I., found him at a gas station, passed out behind the wheel of his Jeep with his engine running, according to the same newspaper. Pazienza failed a field sobriety test and refused to take a Breathalyzer test, authorities said. He recently pleaded no contest to that charge, receiving a sentence of substance-abuse treatment, 60 hours of community service, a $600 fine and no driver’s license for 18 months
In 2005, Pazienza lost his driver’s license for up to a year for a December 2004 incident in which he refused to take a Breathalyzer test after police stopped him for driving erratically.
8. Shocker: Luis Bolano, who tipped the scales for his July 21 bout against junior lightweight Monty Meza-Clay at 17 pounds over the limit, somehow found the discipline to make weight for a fight this past Saturday with lightweight Ray Narh.
Not sure if, in the long run, Bolano will think it was worth it – Narh starched the former junior bantamweight contender less than two minutes into the first round.
9. World Boxing Council featherweight titlist Injin Chi announced his retirement from boxing, opting to compete in kickboxing and mixed martial arts, according to the Bangkok Post. Wait, wait, wait – the Sweet Science loses Chi but regains Ray Mercer? How is this a fair trade?
10. So, how about the protagonists from that fight that was supposed to save boxing? Floyd Mayweather Jr. has come back less than three months after retiring, signing a contract to face junior welterweight champion Ricky Hatton, and Oscar De La Hoya has announced the novel idea that he will fight – gasp! – twice (twice!) in 2008.
David P. Greisman’s weekly column, “Fighting Words,” appears every Monday on BoxingScene.com. He may be reached for questions and comments at fightingwords1@gmail.com