By Kieran Mulvaney
I actually feel a little sorry for Juan Manuel Marquez.
All he did was dominate a solid contender over twelve rounds a little over a week ago—just a few months after taking a clear decision over Marco Antonio Barrera—and nobody’s talking about him.
But then, that’s what happens when you face Rocky Juarez on the same night Joe Calzaghe puts on a clinic against Mikkel Kessler and a week before Miguel Cotto gets past Shane Mosley in one of the most anticipated fights of the year.
Juan Manuel has long been a top ten pound-for-pound entrant, although I personally rated him as the second best of the Marquez brothers until Rafael was upended by Israel Vasquez in their scintillating super featherweight rematch in August. Combine that with the demise of Barrera and Erik Morales and the defeat of Winky Wright, and as much by attrition as anything, by October he had wound up at number three on my list, behind only Floyd Mayweather, Jr. and Manny Pacquiao.
Mayweather and Pacquiao remain atop that list; barring a catastrophic implosion by Floyd against Ricky Hatton on December 8, they’ll close out the year in first and second place, respectively.
Despite dominating Juarez, however, Marquez dropped to number four on the evening of November 3, swapping places with Calzaghe.
I’m one of those American boxing writers (and yes, I am an American boxing writer, notwithstanding my having been born about sixty miles from, as witty publicist Fred Sternburg dubbed him, The Southpaw Joe C. Wales) who was very slow to clamber aboard the Calzaghe bandwagon. I picked Jeff Lacy to beat him (which, in hindsight, was not an especially bright prediction), and I picked Kessler to beat him. I just could not abide Calzaghe’s style of fighting, his slapping flurries, his lack of fundamentals.
Against Kessler, however, Calzaghe not only put on a superb display of stamina and toughness, he also abandoned (except for one brief, overexcited flurry) those same tendencies that critics had found so infuriating. His punches were straighter, his footwork was excellent, and his work rate was outstanding.
And so, Enzo Calzaghe’s baby boy moves to number three on my list—which, more than the alphabet belts around his waist, more than universal recognition as the undisputed champ, more than the cheers of 50,000 people echoing in his ears, must be the reward he has truly sought.
I don’t see who beats Calzaghe now, to be honest. Not even Bernard Hopkins, whose trademarked technique of forcing his opponent to fight for only thirty seconds a round would be surely nullified by the Welsh buzzsaw. With, by his own reckoning, only two or three bouts remaining in his career, Calzaghe has better than even odds of remaining undefeated when he hangs up his gloves.
Meanwhile, Marquez barely had time to settle in to cubicle number four, when along came Miguel Cotto, asking him to move over to number five.
I wasn’t sure, after Saturday night, where to put Cotto. I have, I admit, been an unabashed admirer of his since I sat ringside and winced at the concussive force of the body blows with which he took apart Victoriano Sosa. I was ringside, too, for his next Vegas bout, in which he had to dig deep and show hitherto-undemonstrated boxing skills in the final couple of rounds against Lovemore N’Dou.
There was something about him on those nights that oozed quality and class. It was the cold, clinical, fighter’s instinct, I think, the way he methodically stalked, hunted down and beat up his foe. Nor was I alone: the writers alongside me all felt the same way. This young man, we felt, was the goods.
Ever since, I have been a glass-half-full kind of guy when it has come to his progress. When he has been rattled or floored, some have seen it as evidence of a shaky chin; I have tended to regard it as evidence he can take a shot and come back and win.
I feel the same way about his fight over Shane Mosley. A few, albeit not too many that I have encountered, thought Shane won. Others scored it a draw. Even some who recognize Cotto as a deserved victor questioned whether the result might have been different had Mosley been the or even five years younger, or were disappointed that Cotto allowed Mosley to be the aggressor and pull himself back into the fight over the final third of the contest.
Personally, I saw it as a skilful and gutsy win against a sure-fire, first-ballot Hall-of-Famer. It was a fight that many picked him to lose, on account of Mosley’s speed and boxing ability. In fact, it was Cotto who in many ways was the superior and more adaptable boxer: Instead of launching into his patented body attack, he steadily broke down Mosley with a jackhammer of a jab and some solid right hands. By the middle rounds, it looked to me as if Mosley, who had started briskly enough, was wilting under Cotto’s relentless pressure. As the man from Pomona started to circle away, as if to avoid further punishment, any pre-bout thoughts that this would be fight of the year were being replaced by concerns that it might turn into something of a stinker.
Those fears evaporated when Mosley staged a desperate, determined ,and enthralling rally; but here again, Cotto absorbed the best Mosley had to offer, and by the end of the tenth, it seemed to this observer, had turned the tide back in his favor.
While it wasn’t the kind of blowout that causes jaws to drop in fear, it was in many ways a much more rounded and nuanced performance, and one that has almost certainly put an end to any conversations of Cotto being picked for a big-money fight against Oscar De La Hoya. De La Hoya likely doesn’t want that much trouble at this stage of his life and career and really, who could blame him?
And so, after due consideration, and factoring in the overall quality of his recent opposition—and the extent to which he has just destroyed some of his opponents over the past year or two—I decided Cotto belongs in my number four spot.
So Juan Manuel Marquez now sits at number five. But at least he isn’t likely to slip any further.
There may not be too many opportunities for him to climb up any higher, though. The biggest fight for him at 130 is likely the winner of Saturday’s clash between Joan Guzman and Humberto Soto, with Pacquiao making it very clear he intends to seek more money and the comfort of five more pounds, possibly taking on David and then Juan Diaz.
So, like I said, I feel a little sorry for Juan Manuel Marquez.
Then again, maybe he only has himself to blame. If only he had taken that rematch with Pacquiao in 2004, when he had the chance …
