By Jim Cawkwell
The inevitable could no longer be suppressed. It felt as if Shane Mosley’s perfect left hook not only quickened Fernando Vargas to the canvas, but made shocked spectators of us all to the exposition of certain home truths that Vargas has long denied. Against the elite fighters, Vargas does not belong, and this latest stoppage defeat may signal the end of the tumultuous career that Vargas, in recent years, has failed to sustain with conviction.
It is said that lightning doesn’t strike twice, but it struck thrice in Vargas’ case, offering clear evidence of his limitations at the highest level. In the first round against Felix Trinidad, Vargas leant into a jab, tempting Trinidad into one of his trademark hooks that duly sent Vargas reeling. Naivety in his first mega-fight perhaps, but no coincidence as proved in the eleventh round against Oscar de la Hoya, when a bloodied Vargas repeated the sin and De La Hoya swept in the obligatory hook.
Those wars persuaded Vargas into a revision of his fighting style; he adopted a more defensive sensibility, apt to self-preservation. Unfathomably, Vargas defied his warrior mentality by fighting tactically and with a mere calculated aggression that drew tones of curiosity and disappointment from the audience.
Suspicions arose that Vargas was a shot fighter. Though he tried to convince us otherwise, Vargas was betrayed by his own actions as he postured and posed in the face of openings he would once have battered his way through. His time was at hand, and he knew it.
And for all his belated education under trainer Danny Smith, Vargas faced Mosley still without an answer for the test he’d always failed. In the sixth round, for the third and perhaps final time in his career, Vargas again stepped to his left, snatched at a jab and left the sweet spot on his chin exposed for the hook. Mosley couldn’t miss. Vargas’ body sagged to the ground heavily and his head bounced off the canvas with a dramatic, concussion-inducing thud.
Ever since his precocious beginnings, the blazing force of Vargas’ will stood as one of boxing’s most compelling forces. That will alone brought Vargas to his feet, though he struggled with himself, twice almost pitching forward onto his face before his senses returned.
It was perhaps only his intimate knowledge of Vargas’ resilience under fire that allowed referee Kenny Bayless to send Vargas back into battle. But any more evidence Bayless required to call the stoppage came seconds later as Mosley struck and Vargas’ legs again threatened to falter.
Indignant after their initial fight in February, Vargas rightly claimed that he was in the ascendancy, gaining on Mosley and landing frequently before the aberrant eye injury forced him into defeat. Relishing the chance to rectify the injustice, Vargas appeared ready to excel in the rematch. However, for the first time in his fighting life, he left a boxing ring as if he was never there. He couldn’t match Mosley for speed or sharpness from the start and lost every single round of the fight until suffering the stoppage.
Claims that Vargas can no longer make 154-pounds seem hollow when you consider that only last year he ventured into the middleweight division and felt out of his depth. The truth is that Vargas could make 154-pounds comfortably if he exercised self-control over his eating habits longer than only during his periodic visits to training camp.
As a young, seemingly indestructible fighter, Vargas could embody his uncompromising, brutish public persona in the ring. Now older and somewhat damaged by those wild years, Vargas caught himself in a conflict between the conservative style that sought to preserve him and his own raging instincts that had defined his very existence as a fighter.
The dichotomy of learned habits versus inborn ones that exists in Vargas cannot be overlooked or refined into a more effective fighting machine. Fernando Vargas was always a warrior that fought with a heart that outshone that of his opponent, driving him to victory despite his limitations. Vargas cannot deny the fierce instincts that made him a fighter of such renown, but they must not consume him. If he can no longer be the fighter he once was he must not destroy himself in pursuit of the impossible.
Though he tried to prolong his fighting days, and seems now to have come undone, Vargas could exit boxing as a made man. Watching him tear through the light middleweight division was a special experience. He was so young, yet so powerful; implacable in his mission to bring the boxing world to its knees before him. For a time, he succeeded.
He didn’t win every battle along the way, but the unforgettable manner in which he fought them all will remain far beyond his retirement and those of his successors. And in the years to come, if he can fend off the demons that have come back to drown so many fighters into mediocrity and much worse, Fernando Vargas could look to what he achieved, to a profitable business empire, and a life of comfort beyond the ring.
He could say that he survived to tell the tale.
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