LOS MEJORES: The Greatest Fighters in Mexican History

By Matteo Alderson

Whether you’re a Barrera or a Morales fan, you have to concede to the fact that with his masterful performance the other night, Marco has to be considered the over all victor of their epic three fight trilogy. I mean Barrera entered the fight more than a two to one underdog, he was fighting at a weight that was better suited for Morales, and he had been previously knocked out the last time he faced a fighter who wasn’t a prohibitive underdog.  Still Barrera’s crisp combinations and faster hands made him the clear winner.  Even though the fight was hotly contested, Morales’s face told the whole story. He looked beat up and tired while Marco looked fresh and elated.  Even though it’s really too early to tell how we should evaluate the overall greatness of these two fighters, I’m going to rank the greatest fighters in the history of Mexico and somehow try to place Morales and Barrera on the list by evaluating their careers up to this point.  Remember, the fighters have to be born in Mexico. Boxers like Jose Napoles and Oscar De La Hoya don’t count because they weren’t born in Mexico.  

First and foremost you have to place Julio Cesar Chavez at the top of the list as the greatest fighter in Mexican history.  He meets all the qualifications.  He won legitimate championships in three weight divisions and accumulated over 30-title fight wins during a championship reign that spanned 12 years.  He won the vacant WBC 130-pound title against tough Mario Martinez. He defended the title nine times before moving up to 135 pounds where he dethroned Edwin Chapo Rosario and then partially unified against compatriot Jose Luis Ramirez.  Next he jumped up to the 140-pound division where he dominated over the course of the next five years.

Numbers can be misleading, I mean Marty Jakubowski has over a hundred wins, but the thing with Chavez is that he beat so many world class fighters that it would take too long to even try to list them.  Certainly his biggest wins were against Edwin Rosario and Meldrick Taylor.  You have to remember, coming into his fight with Chavez, Rosario was the WBA lightweight champ and considered one of the hardest punchers in the sport.  He was also coming off a knockout win over a prime Livingstone Bramble and a controversial decision loss to Hector Camacho.  Many experts feel that the Macho Man really regressed as a fighter after that debilitating encounter and that he lost his zest for the game, very much the same way that Prince Nasseem did after he was humbled and humiliated by Barrera. The fight with Edwin Rosario garnered Chavez a lot of attention and solidified his status as one of boxing’s top fighters.  Before the bout with Rosario, a lot of people thought that Chavez was overrated and pointed to his lackluster decision wins over Rocky Lockridge and Juan Laporte, but Julio’s utter domination of Rosario completely changed this perception among critics. After picking Edwin apart and knocking him out in the 11th round, Chavez was universally recognized as one of the five best pound for pound fighters in the sport.

The Meldrick Taylor win was Chavez’s crowning achievement.  Meldrick was a young undefeated gold medallist.  He had recently beaten the highly touted Buddy McGirt for the IBF 140 pound title and he probably had the fastest hands in the sport.  Yes Taylor was winning the fight, but in my opinion the stoppage was legit because the referee asked him if he was all right and he didn’t respond.  If your that discombobulated to where you can’t answer a simple Yes or No question then I don’t think you should be allowed to continue, regardless of how much time is left. 

In evaluating Julio’s overall career it’s hard to place him in the elite upper echelon of the regular all-time great lists because he never really beat a great fighter in his prime. In fraudulently drawing with Pernell Whitaker, he lost his chance to be ranked up there with greats like Sugar Ray Robinson and Roberto Duran. Still, Chavez was a great warrior and did more then enough to be considered the greatest fighter in Mexican history and this is the general consensus among boxing historians. 

This pick may be a little sentimental, but Salvador Sanchez is the second best fighter in Mexican History.  I know he was 23 years old when he died and it’s easy to eulogize the career of young talents when they die prematurely, much the way that society has done with James Dean and Tupac Shakur. If you look at his record with out bias, you’ll see that Salvador Sanchez accomplished enough in a short time period to be considered the second greatest Mexican fighter of all time.  Salvador won the WBC featherweight title against the hard punching Danny Little Red Lopez and made nine successful defenses, but the main reason that he is held in such high regard is that the fighters he beat were of a very high caliber.  In fact some of them ended up either dominating or contending in their divisions for years after his death. 

The crowning achievement of Salvador’s career was knocking out Wilfredo Gomez.  The Puerto Rican juggernaut had dominated the 122-pound division, having made 13 consecutive defenses by knockout.  He had even knocked out Sanchez’s countryman, the great Carlos Zarate who had entered the bout with a 52-0 record.  At the time Wilfredo Gomez was considered to be one of the best fighters in the world and a lot of experts picked him to beat Salvador, but it didn’t happen and Sanchez stopped Gomez in eight rounds to retain his featherweight title.  After the bout, the Puerto Rican great went back down to 122 pounds where he defended his title 4 more times, which included a knockout over Mexican Lupe Pintor, before he moved up and won championships at Featherweight and Super featherweight.  Salvador also beat Juan Laporte by decision and Laporte ended up winning the WBC featherweight championship before becoming a long time contender from 130 to 140 pounds.  Laporte even gave Julio Cesar Chavez a hell of fight when he challenged him for the WBC 130 title in 1986.  In fact, two of the judges had Chavez winning the fight by a one point margin. 

Really the second most important victory in the career of Sanchez was his knock out over Azumah Nelson.  The story went like this.  Don King wanted to showcase Salvador to an American audience and the original opponent fell out so King found this African fighter, Azumah Neslon, who was 13-0 and happened to be the Commonwealth Featherweight title-holder.  He told Salvador that it was going to be an easy fight because the guy was a novice, but to Sanchez’s surprise, the fight was a war and the outcome was in doubt until the very end when Sanchez stopped Neslon in the 15th round.  At the time of the stoppage, one judge had Azumah ahead.  After the fight Sanchez told King, “If that’s your idea of an easy fight I don’t want anymore easy fights from you.” Anyway Azumah Nelson won the WBC featherweight championship two years later and actually lost his last world title in 1997, 15 year after he had been stopped by Sanchez.  He was never stopped by another fighter.

There are still some inconsistencies with Sanchez’s career.  First and foremost his championship reign didn’t last that long because he died at the tender age of 23 just three weeks after the Nelson fight.  Also he never unified against long time WBA counterpart Eusebio Pedroza.

Rankings are always tricky because they are so subjective and the next two fighters that are vying for the position as the 3rd greatest fighter in Mexican History are equally deserving.  First you have Ricardo Lopez, who was a longtime WBC 105-pound champion as well as an IBF 108 pound titlist.  He won over 20 title fights and retired without losing an amateur or professional fight.  He even engaged in a great rivalry with Nicaraguan Rosendo Alvarez.  Their first fight ended in a controversial draw and in the rematch less than a year later Alvarez came in over the limit and Ricardo decided to let the fight go on as scheduled and won a split decision in one of the better fights of 1998.  Today Rosendo Alvarez is still a world-class fighter and currently holds the WBA 108 pound title.  Also Lopez knocked out Saman Sorjaturong in two rounds in a 1993 defense, and the Thai Lander ended up knocking out Humberto Gonzalez for the partially unified junior flyweight championship in 95.  Ricardo Lopez deserves to be considered the 3rd greatest fighter in Mexican History but in all honesty he should have accomplished a lot more.  Lopez stayed at 105 pounds way too long and the minimum category is kind of an illegitimate weight class that’s not even close to having the prestige or legitimacy of one of the eight traditional weight classes.  Come on, how many men in the world actually/naturally weigh 105 pounds? Also Ricardo didn’t even press Don King for a fight with Michael Carbajal or Humberto Gonzalez while they engaged in their lucrative three fight trilogy.  I mean how hard would it have been for Ricardo to have gone up three pounds and fought one of those guys.  Hell in my mind he should have moved up and fought Yuri Arbachakov or even Mark Too Sharp Johnson for the Flyweight title.  They were both real solid champions and with a win in any of the aforementioned fights, El Finito would have staked his claim to being the greatest fighter in Mexican history.

It’s hard to evaluate fighters’ careers in the contemporary setting.  For instant how many titles has Marco Antonio Barrera won and should those bouts that he engaged in without a real title on the line be considered part of his championship record?  Sometimes you have to look at a fighters wins and not really look at the title fight numbers.  I mean look at Ezzard Charles, he is widely considered to be the greatest light heavyweight in history and he never engaged in a title bout at the weight.  So for all intents and purposes I’m not going to view Marco as a 122-pound world champion.  Can you tell me who he beat for that WBO junior featherweight title? I didn’t think so.  Still Barrera fought a number of contenders and former world champs on his way to the featherweight championship. And yes I consider all of his fights after the Nassem Hamed fight and up until the Manny Pacquioa fight as being for the World Featherweight title since the Prince had beaten all the other champions of the different organizations.  He had beaten Tom Johnson for the IBF title, Wilfredo Vazquez, the WBA champ, and Cesar Soto for the WBC title.  So prior to dethroning Prince Naseem Hamed, I view Marco’s fights as being non-title bouts.  His wins against McKinney and Eddie Cook were still impressive.  Both of those guys were top ten contenders that really challenged Marco.  Plus I’ve been to a lot of great fights such as the first Bowe-Holyfield, the first Morales-Barrera fights and I can honestly say that the McKinney fight is the best live bout that I’ve ever seen. 

Early on in his career Barrera was raw, he was the quintessential Mexican warrior, throwing hard left hooks to the body, and willing to take one to give one.  It was in his virtuoso performance against Jesus Salud the fight prior to the Hamed match that Barrera really metamorphisized into a great fighter.  Then Marco just didn’t have an awesome offensive arsenal but he also had a tight defense and a fighting rhythm that transformed him into a calculated assassin. As a result his fundamentally sound defense and controlled aggression allowed him to dominate Hamed and to capture the true world featherweight championship.  His subsequent performance were also impressive with the exception of the second Morales fight where it appeared that he had been outboxed.  The third fight cleared up the controversy and now you have to rank Barrera ahead of Morales because if you really look at their bouts as one 36 round fight, you have to acknowledge that Marco won it.  Thus with his victories over an underrated Naseem Hamed and his two wins against Erik Morales, along with almost ten years of success at the world class level, you have to say that Marco Antonio Barrera is the fourth greatest fighter in the history of Mexico. 

                     THE LIST

1. Julio Cesar Chavez

2. Salvador Sanchez

3. Ricardo Lopez

4. Marco Antonio Barrera

5. Erik Morales - WBC titles in 3 divisions.  Solid wins against Wayne McCullough, Junior Jones, Daniel Zaragoza, and In-Ji Chi. Throw in the trilogy against Barrera and you have yourself the 5th greatest fighter in Mexico’s history. Think about it, he’s engaged in 18 title fights and he’s only 28 years old.

6. Carlos Zarate - Made 8 defenses of the 118-pound title. At one point he was 45-0 (44 KOs). He also knocked out Alfonso Zamora out in 4 rounds in a unification fight that wasn’t sanctioned, at the time Zamora was 29-0 (29 KOs).  It really hurts Zarate that he was knocked out by Wilfredo Gomez.  It’s the whole Mexican-Puerto Rican rivalry thing, it hurts even worse when it’s to a rival.

7. Vicente Saldivar - Maybe this guy should be ranked higher.  He made 8 defenses of the unified bantamweight title from 64 to 67, retired, then came back and won it again two years later.  He also has wins over Sugar Ramos and a young Ismael Laguna.

8. Ruben Olivares - The old timers love this guy and he was a pure knock out artist who won his first 60 bouts.  He was a champ at bantamweight and twice at featherweight, but he partied as hard as he hit and he was only 8-5 in world title fights.   

9. Humberto Gonzalez-Chiquita - A classy fighter and it’s like fans have forgotten that he won two out of three against Carbajal.  Is it because Humberto had to box to beat little hands of stone in their anticlimactic second and third matches?  Also he twice lost unexpectedly by knock out.  The first time to Rolando Pascua and the second time to Saman Sorjaturong.  He still has to be considered the greatest fighter in 108-pound history based on his victories or Carbajal.

10. Miguel Canto - He was the WBC flyweight champ from 75 to 79 and made fourteen consecutive defenses.  Jesus Rivero, the legendary Mexican trainer that had De La Hoya trying to use defensive maneuvers to beat Pernell Whitaker, trained Canto.  In 1994 Ring magazine ranked him as the second greatest flyweight in history.

11. Daniel Zaragoza - Daniel won the WBC 122 pound title on three occasions. Along the way he engaged in 20 title fights and beat such outstanding fighters as Wayne McCullough and Hector-Acero Sanchez.  His wars with Paul Banke were legendary and part of Los Angeles boxing lore.

12. Chalky Wright - The guy won over 100 bouts during the Golden Age of featherweights and lost the title to Willie Pep.  That’s an honor in itself.

13. Gilbert Roman - Held the WBC 115 title for three years in the late 80s and won 13-title fights during the course of his two reigns.  In 1994, Ring Magazine ranked him as the second best Junior Bantamweight in the division’s history.

14. Miguel Angel Gonzalez - He was supposed to be the second coming of Chavez and he just didn’t pan out.  Early on he had some good wins against tough opposition, but it seemed like his career went down hill after the Lamar Murphy fight.  At the end of the day, he made 10 defenses of the WBC lightweight title against pretty good opposition that included Hector Lopez, Levander Johnson, and Jean Babtiste Mendy. 

15. Rafael Marquez - He won the title from a good champion in Tim Austin and holds two wins over Mark Johnson.  Has potential to climb this list.

16. Jose Luis Ramirez - His reigns were short, but his knockout of Edwin Rosario, a career that spans over 100 fights, and the gift decision against Pernell Whitaker are enough to make the two-time lightweight champ one of Mexico’s greatest fighters.

17. Pipino Cuevas - He won the WBA welterweight title and scored 10 knockouts in 11 defenses.  He was almost decapitated by Thomas Hearns.

18. Carlos Palomino - Made seven defenses of the WBC Welterweight title that he won from John Stracey, Jose Napoles’s conqueror, and lost it to the great Wilfredo Benitez.  Andy Price beat both Palomino and Cuevas before they won their titles.

19. Jorge Paez - Retained his IBF featherweight title on eight different occasions.  He also gave Sweat Pea a good fight when he challenged him for the lightweight title and was a top contender for years in the lightweight division.

20. Lupe Pintor - He won the WBC Bantamweight title with a controversial decision over Carlos Zarate and then made 8 defenses of the title.  He also captured the WBC 122 pound title and his fight with Wilfredo Gomez was a classic.

21. Raul Perez - Made seven defenses of the WBC bantamweight title that he won from the tough Miguel Lora.  He also won a championship at 122.

22. Juan Manuel Marquez - He was ducked by Prince Naseem for years, but his fight against Pacman and his wins over Peden, Medina, and Gainer help him break into the list.  This guy might be in the top five before it’s all over, but I keep thinking about his mediocre performance against Norwood.

23. Manuel Medina - Won versions of the Featherweight title on five different occasions and has recorded wins against some good fighters which include Tom Johnson, Scott Harrison, and Alejandro Gonzalez.

24. Alfonso Zamora - Was 29-0 (29 KOS) when he met Carlos Zarate in a unsanctioned unification bout.  He also defended his WBA Bantamweight title five times and one of those defenses was a knockout over future featherweight great Eusebio Pedroza.

25. Alejandro Gonzalez - Made two defenses of the WBC Featherweight title, but his thrilling victory over an undefeated Kevin Kelley is what really allows him to make the cut.

Notes:

Currently there are eight Mexican born fighters enshrined in the boxing hall of fame.  They are Vicente Saldivar, Chalky Wright, Miguel Canto, Pipino Cuevas, Daniel Zaragoza, Carlos Palomino, Carlos Zarate, and Salvador Sanchez.

Battling Shaw was the first Mexican to win a World title and he lost his Junior Welterweight Championsip to Tony Canzoneri in 1933.  Baby Arizmendi was the second and he won two out of five against Henry Armstrong.

Even though most boxing fans consider Carlos Palomino to be American, he was born in Mexico.

(Special Thanks to Sherman Lambert for helping me out with the research)