Well? Of all the ATG FWs throughout history, there's not too many I'd pick against him. Looking at it logically, and since he retired early, who was around his weight at the time? Now obviously he lost to Durán, and I'd pick him to do so to any version of Durán. It's a clear cut win. Lopez, Chacón and Olivares were probably the next best challenges for him. Followed by probably Hafey and Utagawa. Basically, easy work for him. Fighters coming up on the horizon in the late 70s like Pedroza and Sánchez are certified ATGs. Throw them in with the Panamanian and you're seeing ATG two-way technical fights, but in my humble opinion, Sánchez has come across something horrible for him. Whilst Marcel liked to fight on the front foot, he could also box on the back-foot all night, or enough to beat Sánchez. I'm honestly not sure at all about the Pedroza fight, both could win with the correct game-plan. Pedroza's dirty fighting could be a deciding factor, but then again I'm hard pressed to pick against the quicker fighter, who was also the better boxer. Guys like Lopez, Lockridge, Nelson, Fenech ect. just aren't good enough imo. Even if their styles would give Marcel headaches, his class and skill would let him pull it out of the bag, imo. Looking back through the era's, pre Walker law I think their methods of fighting are a little too dated to beat Marcel, and some have drastically low workrates too. Killbane and Attel are without question greater, but from film of them, I just can't see them beating Marcel. I can see McGovern KOing him, but I don't think I'd pick that. Afterwards, you have the 30s, involving guys like Chocolate, Canzoneri, Arizmendi and of course, Henry Armstrong. Hank beats him so bad. Very one-sided/clear decision, Marcel shows his class then loses all momentum. Hank's workrate and bullishness keeps Marcel backing up and not throwing. Canzoneri vs Marcel would be beautiful, I think Marcel would prevail here, though. Basically coming down to speed and agility, but Canzoneri is no slouch in those aspects, or any really, and could obviously win. Hell, Marcel wouldn't even be Canzoneri's best wins. As for the 40s... Pep and Saddler. Both beat him, Pep via tooling and Saddler via KTFO. As for the other contenders, Marcel is comfortably the 3rd best of that era and beats the rest. The 60s have Marcel's absolute poison, Vicente Saldívar. Saldivar would bait Marcel into attacking and then bull, counter and out-hustle him. Awful style. How about modern FWs like John, Márquez, Barrera, Morales, Pacquiao or Naz? All of them lose. Yes, including Pacquiao. John and Naz aren't out-boxing El Ñato. Márquez and Morales aren't better than Argüello, despite fighting similarly. Barrera just isn't on that level as a FW, despite having a slight style advantage. Pacquiao is the hardest sell, but if Marcel can take Argüello's power I'm confident he can take Pacquiao's, furthermore, he was clearly skilled enough to out-box Pacquiao and so it becomes a matter of reducing Pac's workrate. I think he'd be able to out-position him to do so. So all in all, I only have him losing to Armstrong, Saldívar, Durán, Saddler and Pep. 5 losses vs everyone else? I'd say that's pretty damn good. Top 5, H2H, worry? I don't have the answer, but I'd say it's more than likely.
Marcel was a VERY underrated fighter who’s use of the right lead followed by the straight left was amazing and nearly unique. He had brilliant footwork too, excellent use of the pivot and angle change. Great post GC. Cheers.
Super post, very informative. Marcel is somewhere south of great (in the all-time sense) and north of very good. Those who would best him are in the upper echelon and while I agree on most of your assessments (save perhaps Sal Sanchez) the evidence is a bit thin. He bounced back well from the Duran loss but had a few trouble spots (edged Miguel Riasco for the Panamanian feather title and lost to Leonel Hernandez) but had some good wins (Spider Nemoto, Sammy Serrano, Antonio Gomez) ... but I’d like to have seen him take his act on the road more to show what he could do outside his backyard. The Arguello win is a fantastic check on his ledger and it’s amazing that he retired right after. Seems like he might have had more in front of him and we missed out on some telling and tantalizing matchups due to his sudden decision to leave the game.
Marcel is a hidden gem. He rarely gets talked about and it was only relatively recently that I saw his name come up on these boards (not saying it hadn't before; probably just missed it in the past). I couldn't claim to be an expert on Marcel, but I have a reasonable recollection of his Duran, Shibata and Arguello matches. Very composed and cool under fire and I think his footwork is amongst the best I have ever seen. Also - whilst the Marcel/Duran bout is up there with my favorites and it was a great win for Duran, the stoppage in the 10th round seems to me to have been quite strange.
Some of the best footwork ever IMO - look what he did to Shibata, who was brilliantly skilled and a wonder on his feet with amazing co ordination. He perplexed him with his movement and was pretty consistent in beating him to the punch, and not many in the history of Boxing would 'beat' Shibata so well with pure boxing. Usually a KO was needed. Marcel is one of the best Featherweights in 50+ years of the sport, H2H, and gives any ATG a hard fight IMO. I'd advise you to watch his domination over the extremely talented champion Antonio Gomez, who had previously completely destroyed champion Shojo Saizo. Marcel was an absolute marvel in this bout, with Gomez not being able to adapt at all despite his vast skill and talent. And of course, check out his great win over Arguello. If I had to pick a 'weakness' from him, it would be his 'lack' of offensive variety in comparison to other ATGs, but his insane footwork, fluidity and unorthodox leads more than made up for it. Overall, an absolute beast who deserves more recognition.
Also, I've never seen it mentioned anywhere else, but Marcel could actually be quite dirty, especially with his head and elbows at times. He did it numerous times vs Gomez.
rough and M_M have said most of what I'd say tbh, and very well at that. Wee Hank is the only other feather I've seen on film who I might give more than a 50 per cent chance of beating Marcel more often than not. Obviously that insane level and style of pressure can go a long way to stymying even the most gifted and skilled of boxer punchers, but the pre-prime Marcel was more or less even with the pre-prime Duran, probably a shade behind, at the time of the baffling stoppage. They both look great in that fight if a bit raw but it's the closest indicator imo to what a fight with Armstrong might look like albeit not like for like. I certainly don't see Henry running Ernesto out if the ring based on it, not even remotely. Like @roughdiamond said, Marcel himself was very dirty with his head and elbows when he wanted to be, he really mugged the outstanding Gomez with those tactics in a rather Pedroza/Duranesque fashion. Armstrong could mark up too, as the Ambers and Zivic fights showed. It's more than fair enough to pick Hank to win, but I wouldn't make him a strong favourite. Pep lost rounds to the likes of Bartolo, Terranova, Wright etc, he's not tooling Marcel by a long way. Very close fight imo. Pep sharper defensively, both reflexively and in terms of his range of defensive techniques; Marcel a bit more fluid, offensively dynamic and inclined to segway defence into attack. Both with astonishing footwork, stamina and balance, range of pivots and shifts etc, both with voluminous offensive output. Pep the better jabber and slightly tidier fighter in general, Marcel a tad quicker of hand and the more spiteful puncher. Both capable of being under handed and dirty. Again, it's only two fights out of a large field of experience but Saddler had real trouble with a fast, mobile and skilled boxer-puncher like Elorde, although Elorde being a lefty also helped. I don't think Flash was as good as Marcel either, though a great fighter. Saddler, though irrevocable was immense at equalizing speed and skill disadvantages with his range, power and fouling. I just get the feeling that he'd really need a ref willing to let him get away with murder to even the scales against Marcel, and Marcel wasn't exactly a shrinking violet. He'd come out worse than Saddler probably in a prolonged battle of rough-housing but would let Sandy know he was there in that regard, I think, while seeking to use his other advantages in longer bursts in between not allowing Saddler to run him over in the trenches. Saldivar was monstrous and is one of my all-time favourites, but I think his fight with Laguna might be key. That was a razor-close fight, albeit with the shorter distance favouring Laguna imo. And Laguna and Marcel had a lot in common stylewise. Laguna faster and more her herky-jerky in approach but Marcel more complete in terms of his full range of tools I'd say and a bit better fighter overall. It's not as though Saldivar completely ran through Winstone either in their first two fights, he spotted a lot of the early rounds warming through the gears and only really ran over Howard in the last four rounds or so where Winstone crucially lacked the punch to deter him on top of being gradually worn down from Saldivar's body attack and heavy straight left. Winstone was marvellous and had a better jab than Marcel and had at least comparable speed of hand and foot enough not to be outclassed in that department, more consistently defensively responsible against hooks. Marcel though was again just more talented and complete. A harder, two-fisted puncher, great stamina in the championship rounds as shown when he crucially rallied against another Saldivaresque late rounds cyborg in Arguello. And better at ditching the body shots and straight punches that set Winstone up to lose the war while winning the battle so to speak. I'd probably favour Marcel over every featherweight since him, cleanly enough so with Pedroza and Fenech being the biggest hurdles, Fenech more so. It was the above h2h comparisons that got my attention.
