Fernando Vargas vs Saul Alvarez

Yeah, that's a good point. If you can beat Ike and Twinkly, guess that was the logical opponent.

 

Vargas was ruined by Tito, he should never have been in the ring with a world class fighter while still being so green, Canelo would have destroyed him.

 

A JMW Canelo wasn’t destroying Vargas.

Vargas would have given him a great fight.

 

The only reason for that is that Canelo is far better now than when he fought at 154, levels.

 

That’s right. But this is a JMW fight, so we can only pick the versions of Canelo who fought at JMW.

 

The Campas Win was good as well. He was 14-0 when he beat a 72-2 Yori boy.

 

Vargas-Tito was definitely the fight to make at 154 lb, but that itself is a sad twist of fate. This was a case of a fighter being too precocious for his own well-being, given the division and era he was in. Campas, Winky and Ike were fine fighters, but Trinidad was a fine fighter and a truly dangerous (potentially ruinous) one for a ballsy young talent like Fernando to be mixing with. Ideally, a couple more years pro maturation were needed to prepare him for that assignment, which could quite realistically have made up those couple inches he needed to beat Tito (when you analyse the bout, that's all there really was in it).

Awesome conviction, the schoolboy stepping to men. A part of what made him one of the first fighters I loved.

 

Nelo TKO
Like Hoya but more brutal.
Would have been a fantastic fight for sure.

 

Canelo couldn't destroy an old Cotto, so I don't see any reason to pick him to stop a prime Vargas. He'd win a close decision, in an awesome fight.

 

bc the cotto fight was a good technical boxing match at distance with both of them trying to counter each other and you only stop cotto by swarming him and gassing him out like pacman and margarito not by single shots like canelo was throwing. vargas will be bum rushing canelo

 

Feroz was no James Kirkland or Perro as a marauder. And he could box at range, too.

 

Vargas could fight a controlled fight if he wanted to, as he did with Quartey, Wright, Campas and against Trinindad where he relied heavely on his defense and counter punching to make it a competitive fight. Vargas vs Canelo at 154 would have been a great fight, one id bet Fernando would have a great shot at winning. A 50-50 fight imo, maybe even a slight edge to El Feroz.

 

I was a big Vargas fan back in the day, but he'd only be competitive against Canelo, but in no he isn't beating Canelo even at light middleweight. He lost all his biggest fights. I know Canelo is not popular on this forum, but I'll just say it; it's debatable if DelaHoya or Trinidad beat Canelo at light middleweight and I love ODLH and TT a whole lot more than Canelo. At light middleweight Canelo was a counter puncher and Vargas, Trinidad and ODLH were just going to walk into Canelo's punches all night. Trinidad I might give the upper hand at light middle, but at middle weight it's all Canelo.

 

Vargas was far too green for Tito, suicide, he ws nowhere that level at that time, he was thrown to the wolves.

 

Well, that's just it — in almost every respect, he absolutely was at that level, save some shades of maturation.

Wipe the prejudice of knowing that Vargas got knocked out from your mind and revisit the fight. Despite how brutally he was beaten in the end, he wasn't too far off having the beating of Trinidad, just some inches here and there that would have made all the difference (imagine that Vargas wasn't so overeager in the 1st and didn't get off to such a dreadful start, for one thing). If he'd been just a little more judicious in his decision-making at a couple points in that fight, he wins it. That's the kind of wisdom that comes with the three to four years between age twenty-three and a man's physical prime (where he is also constitutionally optimum).

Oh, and that 5th round. That is undoubtably the most brilliant and close to perfect round that anyone (including Oscar De La Hoya, Bernard Hopkins, Winky Wright or Jones Jr.) has fought against Félix Trinidad, and also the one that best encapsulates the young Vargas' lost potential. Feroz boxed Tito's ears off, turning him in circles around ring center, slipping and parrying the spearing jabs coming his way while snapping back the guy's head with his own sharp left, mixing in single and double hooks to head and body and leaving him hitting air with his signature left hook, then put the exclamation point on his dominance of the round with an audacious right uppercut up through the guard, ghosting off at an angle to avoid payback. It was even more remarkable because it came after a torrid first two rounds, and after having the momentum he'd gathered in the 3rd and 4th rounds derailed by a pair of spiteful low blows. He was a beautiful boxer.

If the circumstances had delayed a meeting with the monster from PR 'til a few more fights down the line, things could (I firmly believe, would) have panned out very differently for Vargas in that fight, therefore his career.


(Like a Rocky franchise movie, I'm guilty of recycling some of my old work here, but I guess it bears repeating.)


P.S. It's worth asking oneself who Canelo boxed, while days shy of his twenty-third birthday, that represented the kind of threat a prime Trinidad did? Trout was solid, little Floyd was great, Lara was very tricky. None of them were scary, dangerous guys, relatively speaking. Best anyone might come up with is Angulo, and he's certainly no Tito analogue.