http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rdscONOxnnA&feature=related Starts at 6:50. Right when it looks like the pressure is cracking Vargas, he unveils that left hook to the body and gets Tito going in reverse. And then the pressure does crack him, but man is this a great round.
Great round, one of my favorite and most watched fights ever. Everyone talks about Vargas being too macho for his own good, and round 9 was an example, but Tito had already turned the fight in his favor late in round 6, after being dominated in round 5 and dropped in the 4th. Those ball shots were brutal. I remember a Tito fan back in the day saying they were "borderline" low blows.
Was that fan named Miguel Cotto? :rofl I also love the old Foreman/ Merchant/ Lampley exchanges. Right when I'm thinking to myself "Man I miss Big George!" after he IMMEDIATELY sees how badly Tito was hurt by a body shot, two rounds later he's talking about Tito being on the balls of his feet AGAIN and saying he can't win a decision in Vegas. :-( Ah, the good old days.
This is the round that Vargas turned ******ed. The ref or the corner should have stopped the fight here. From here til the 12th round was Tito Trinidad ass kicking.
That round was the beginning of the end for Vargas. He began to take a real pounding in the 9th which would set the stage for the brutality that would come to him in the 12th.
why stop the fight there? that was a hell of a round with both guys trading and battling it out. what a fight.
Stopping it at this point also would have been flushing the monumental effort it took to even make it out of the first.