His fights with Nakajima and Tomori were underrated. The first fights being close, high level technical affairs on both ends. The rematches being one sided dominations from Zapata. Olivo, Torres, Vorasingh, Penalosa, and Hozumi were his other showcase bouts. His close, controversial fights came against Chang, Laciar, and Bassa. Haven’t seen his fight with Alfonso Lopez but I imagine that was a great two way chess match. He was more offensive minded early on. Up until the Ursua fight. After that he mostly stuck to defensive boxing, where he was a master on par with any so long as his head was in it. He also seemed to give up fights he clearly had the ability to win, such as the Laciar and Bassa fights. Then again he might’ve gotten knocked out if he took more chances.
Been a long time since I’ve watched any of his fights, so forgive me if my memory is faulty on any of those.
W15 German Torres. Torres hardly lays a glove on him. At this point Zapata blended outstanding defense with decent offense. This was peak Zapata.
For his peak performances look no further than his fights against Joey Olivo and German Torres. At his best he was a supremely talented fighter when he put it all together, offense and defense wise. Very smooth and gifted southpaw who wasn’t always the most consistent but still made the most of his career. Still gets highly underrated here. His fight against Amado Ursua is also a very entertaining albeit short fight. He put on a much more aggressive performance on Ursua before he got careless and KO’d in the second round.
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Just got around to watching his flyweight title fight against Javier Lucas. Slipped my radar. I’m 6 rounds in and so far this is looking like maybe his most impressive defensive showing. The moves he’s pulling off to avoid these attacks from Lucas are unreal. He’s like the real life Gumby. And Lucas is definitely no slouch. edit: finished it. I had Zapata taking 7 of the first 10 rounds. I only gave him one of the last 5, which happened to be the 15th and final round. His defensive showcase didn’t let up too much, but his offense became sporadic at best once Lucas started getting the measure of him. It’s definitely for the best that he didn’t get dragged into trading blows for more than a few seconds at a time. Even if it had ended up costing him a draw, that’s a lot better than a KO loss in a fight where you had a commanding lead. Lucas was really going for it. The Penalosa fight remains his greatest ever pure boxing exhibition.
