What fights of his are your favourite. His biggest strenght/weakness and where you place him overall at bantamweight? Overall what do you give him out of 10
He was a great fighter. I personally think he’s a top 5 all-time at Bantamweight and anywhere from 6-8 on the all-time Mexican list. His best fights and performances are the Martinez win when he won the title and of course his defeat of Zamora. A great action packed fight. The Dávila fight is an excellent one and a great win and his dominant performance of Ferrari would probably be my other choice. Dávila doesn’t get talked about a lot but he was an excellent stylist who threw wonderful textbook combination punches. I think their styles meshed well before Zarate took over and took him out. Zarate really did the basics well. Very well. He was economical and patient but was very accurate and hit like hell. He was also a murderous bodypuncher. He wasn’t the quickest and he could be hit but he wasn’t what I’d call slow or a catcher. He had good positioning and footwork. Again, he was very good at the basics. He was very dominant to the point that the only real close-ish fight in his career was against Pintor which IMO (and most) was a ripoff decision. A lot of his competition outside of the aforementioned was not quite stellar and perhaps that added to him running up and insane record but he was a truly special fighter. He’s a great guy too. One of the nicest boxers you could hope to meet.
He's the first boxer that I saw block punches with his elbows, then counter with big shots. ATG at his weight.
ChrisJS pretty much explained everything well about Zarate. Great fighter, one of my favorites. I'd consider him a textbook pressure boxer-puncher. As already mentioned he was very good at the basic skills, actually very underrated as a technician since he was mostly known as a puncher. Knew how to cut off the ring and stalk his opponents, threw great body shots and never wasted any punches. He wasn't exactly a one hit KO artist but he threw accurate punches that eventually wore down the opponent. I'd say he's Top 10 greatest Mexican fighter.
Top 10 Bantam...closer to 10 than 5. Didn’t face great comp. Great power and people love to overrate power punchers.
