*** The Marco Antonio Barrera super-thread ***

#14 Marco Antonio Barrera Tapia vs. José Luis Valbuena

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Here is the "fifth" defense of Barrera's ostensibly contiguous WBO super bantamweight title reign (although in reality the second of its de jure reboot). In posterity this is considered an extension of the reign begun when he forced Richie Wenton to quit on his stool to capture the vacant belt in 1998. Érik Morales technically relieved him of it with his SD victory in their first encounter, but when he immediately jumped up to featherweight the WBO made the interesting choice to just re-award Barrera the belt without having to re-earn it.

Speaking of that loss, Marco was angered by it, and wanted to vent his frustrations - and the 90 seconds that Luiz Claudio Freitas (elder brother of Brazilian all time great Acelino "Popó" Freitas...basically the Walter Dario Mattysse to his Lucas Martin) wasn't enough to quench his blood-thirst. Valbuena, however, was a completely different sort of fighter than Freitas. To start with, he was a lefty...

To date, Barrera's experience against southpaws had consisted of Eddie Cook, Frankie Toledo, Agapito Sánchez & Jesse Magana. Of these four, arguably only Agapito had won a round - and that only because he dropped MAB at the very end after having lost the previous eleven on the judges' cards.

This foray into battle with a skillful and heavy-handed southpaw lands smack in the midst of what I refer to as Marco's transformative "Blue Period". :yep A stretch of fifteen matches in which he wore either white trunks with blue lettering or vice-versa in nearly a dozen of them. It also happens to mark his metamorphosis from a composed & competent slugger to a master of subtle ring-craft.

This middle layer of a world championship triple-header on a TVKO Pay-Per-View (later rebranded as HBO PPV ) was sandwiched between Derrick Gainer vs. Freddie Norwood in the PPV opener and the headline attraction of prime RJJ at the very apex of his mythology - still considered invincible at this point, as his only defeat was the widely maligned (and conclusively avenged) DQ against Griffin. It would be four more years and seven wins later that Jones would suffer the first of five career stoppage losses. The main event of this card was actually when he completed his unification of the light heavyweight titles, relieving Eric Harding of his green belt.

It must be noted that Valbuena, the previous year, had knocked out Venezuelan compatriot and former Olympic athlete Carlos Barreto in a rematch of their '98 draw...and that knockout led to Barreto's death a few days later. Eerily, the match with Barrera came on exactly the 11-month anniversary of the fateful Barreto II. Undoubtedly this weighed on Valbuena's mind, but I don't think it caused him to pull any punches - indeed, he scored two knockouts in between the Barreto II and Barrera matches and would score a few more over the remainder of his career. But ring psychology is a funny thing. He knew they weren't a couple of kids in there chucking water balloons at each other. He knew the stakes. And he knew that Barrera had an even bigger reputation for battering people senseless than he did.

This was seasoned amateur versus seasoned pro, and it showed. Valbuena had spent a decade in the unpaid ranks and from the first bell was dancing around with a slew of point-scoring right jabs - while Barrera, with nearly as many world title bouts as Valbuena had pro bouts (only 20, barely over a third of the Baby Faced Assassin's 54!), kept up his squaline pressure, hammering the body with heavy croquet sticks from either side.

Barrera shows my favorite combination - the diving right hand on the navel followed by a snap-up left hook on the chin. Very effective in the 2nd - with Comp-U-Box reporting 38 of 111, 34% for MAB and 18 of 132, 14% for Valbuena.

Valbuena did quite well early despite the raging bull act from Barrera - in fact leading on the Harold Lederman scorecard after three and then once more after five. In the fifth he was deprived of what in all honesty probably should have been ruled a body shot flash knockdown. Barrera was off-balance, yes, and his left wrist did get twined in a lock with Valbuena's right - but he wouldn't have fallen without the quick underhanded left that Valbuena sneaked into his breadbasket.

The commentators, in real time, predict that based on this Barrera would fare poorly against someone as elusive as Naseem Hamed (......) - and George Foreman goes as far as to say that all Valbuena is missing is a bit more professional experience and he could easily school Barrera. I'm not sure Big George found himself quite totally vindicated by Valbuena's showing here, but he certainly did alright considering the gulf in non-simulation flight time.

Very seesawing type of fight - I only disagree with Lederman on a single round in the opening five, having Barrera instead of Valbuena winning two in the first three - and then MAB clearly bossed the sixth with pressure and body shots while Valbuena righted the ship in the seventh with clean boxing, controlling Barrera with movement and straight combos off the jab. Valbuena frustrated Barrera in the eighth, but the champion still landed more, tripling Valbuena's connect percentage despite very good defense and incredibly high work rate (mostly throwaway right jabs) from the Venezuelan - and here Lederman and I diverge again. He gives the round to Valbuena, pushing him up 77-75 while my card read the same but in reverse, in Barrera's favor. Valbuena dominated the first two minutes of the ninth, continuing to neatly outbox the Mexican until a late desperate surge, with Barrera putting on his "angry" face and biting down on his gum shield. By my reckoning this wasn't quite enough to steal it, but for Lederman it was - narrowing Valbuena's lead to 86-85 (while on my card Barrera's narrowed to exactly the same). Round ten was fairly clear for the champion, as Valbuena's gas tank began to sputter and it was all he could do to hop around in a defensive canter...but the following round was extremely close. Valbuena kept pushing out right jabs and left crosses with a high degree of accuracy but with his arms like wet noodles, crumpling on impact against Barrera's face or chest. Barrera on the other hand landed very little, a few heavy blows downstairs, but unable to pin Valbuena down long enough to really go to work. Lederman awarded MAB the round, bringing him ahead 105-104...but on mine Valbuena just shaded it, which caused my scorecard to finally dovetail with Harold's by a very different route. We both saw him taking it home, ultimately 115-113 - the same as judge Tom Miller. Barrera fought his ass off in the final three minutes but as soon as the bell rang he gives a dejected shake of the head, ignoring the cries of the fans who clearly enjoyed themselves thoroughly, more concerned with acknowledging that it wasn't his most dominant performance, harshly self-critical.

Here's a little something that nobody except Marco and his doctors knew, however, that might help excuse his subpar outing (not to in any way take away from Valbuena, who fought as well as he could and put in a very nearly world class effort) - although I doubt he personally would accept excuses being made on his behalf, proud warrior that he is: this is the first of Barrera's victories on the countdown list from the OP (in other words, the first to make his top 17 wins) that occurred after his craniotomy in 1997. That's right, Barrera had brain surgery, on the sly, in Mexico City, between the Jones II and Rosario matches - and the public was kept totally in the dark about this for several years, with it not being reported on until 2003! Barrera fought the rest of his career - and continues to live out his days in civilian life - with a metal plate over his frontal lobe. And he was already such a hard-headed guy to begin with.

 

#13 Marco Antonio Barrera Tapia vs. Enrique José Sánchez León

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Sánchez had fought on the undercard of Barrera vs. Morales I, and had been rooting for his fellow Mexico City native, and was even part of the rioting crowd when the scorecards were read. This despite them already having been established as rivals, in the distant past...

Sánchez, a former WBA super bantamweight champion, had defeated Barrera in the amateurs when he was 17 and MAB only 15. That was a tiny speck in the rearview mirror, however. Enrique was now a 12 year pro, and beginning his working relationship with new coach Antonio Jiménez, after having fired Nacho Beristáin. (among the sport's most altogether mystifying ill-advised choices)

Barrera, on the other hand, was riding a high of confidence after bringing Prinze Naz crashing down to earth from his palace in the clouds. This was by no means a gimme opponent but it was perceived as being a step down from Hamed. Lots of boxing opponents are referred to disparagingly as "cab drivers" - well Sánchez, owned a small fleet of taxis. So he was in hierarchal terms a step up from a cab driver, at least.

This would be Marco's third southpaw opponent in four bouts - the previous two being Hamed and Valbuena. Emmanuel Steward even comments in the opening moments of the 1st that Barrera has learned a great deal from his recent wealth of experience (24 rounds) versus southpaws...both at least as quick and sharp as Sánchez. Neither had quite Enrique's penchant for dirty tactics, however - particularly headbutts.

Barrera dealt with both the stance and the in-and-out darting style of Sánchez on his own terms, from the jump. Barrera kept him at bay with counter left hooks every time Sánchez reached in with a right jab, and the first two rounds were competitive but clear for MAB. Then in R3, he began to dial up the power, and it would prove more than his opponent could stand up to. Barrera timed a perfect counter right ducking a jab and pushing off his rear heel, and Sánchez was sat down hard. The rest of the way it was all Barrera, stalking behind a left jab & working precise, fluid, damaging combinations. Larry Merchant pointed out, correctly, that even subtracting the knockdown it could have been scored 10-8.

Sánchez would begin tasting his own blood in the 4th, and with just moments left after having carefully walked the razor's edge for two minutes and change, he was caught with a left hook/right hand combo that put him down again. Lederman card at this point: 40-34. A deep hole and Sánchez was in there without a shovel, as it was plain to see that Barrera was in the same artfully destructive form that had foiled Hamed.

Rallying in the fifth, Sánchez had some more offensive success and soaked up fewer head shots - but the bad news was that MAB had begun concentrating on putting leaks in the basement. A merciless barrage nearly sawed him in half and the HBO commentators were already calling for a corner retirement. At least he didn't go down in this one...

Barrera looked wizardly in the 6th, taking a quick backward step to smoothly dodge the right jab and then snaking out the left, touching Sánchez and jogging around to his left to dig a hard body hook. Some really memorable and GIF-worthy exchanges...with little enough coming back from Enrique that answering the bell for the 7th began to look an exercise in futility. And so he didn't. With a busted eardrum, shattered nose, and the abuse heaped on more thickly with each passing minute...wise choice.

With this performance, Barrera cemented himself as, in the words of Emmanuel Steward, the sport's new "systematic destroyer" - and was in the discussion for bumping either Mayweather or De La Hoya for a spot in the pound for pound top five. The stage was set for the Morales rematch. As for Sánchez, he was discarded into the rubble pit and would never headline a big card again.

This fight, while not even making Barrera's top dozen wins, still was a pretty good one, but would be overshadowed less than sixty hours later, when the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center rocked the nation on Tuesday morning of the following week. I doubt even among diehard boxing fans that, past Monday, there was hardly any Barrera vs. Sánchez water cooler talk for the remainder of 2001...

 

#12 Marco Antonio Barrera Tapia vs. Mzonke Fana

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Barrera was now embarking upon on the fourth winning streak of his career. First he was unbeaten on the rise, going 43-0 (31). Then he lost twice on the spin to Jones, and rebuilt with an official 6-0-0-1 (5) run (which should be 7-0 with six knockouts, but for the Mexican commission's strange decision to alter his knockout victory over Cesar Najera into a No Contest just because they couldn't verify Najera's record) before Morales I, after which he went 8-0 (4) before running headlong onto the sacrificial altar for a prime & hungry Manny Pacquiao. Since that devastating eleventh-round TKO loss, he began what ESPN referred to as his unlikely "rise from the ashes", defying all the critics who said that Pacquiao had exposed him as too far over-the-hill to hang with the best. Starting by knocking out Paulie Ayala, then putting himself in the history books as officially besting Morales in their rubber match, he was on a roll once more and had earned himself a berth headlining on PPV, even with a little-known dance partner, just on the strength of his own name recognition.

(IB funfact: Marco would never, in his career, fail to have multiple consecutive victories...in other words he was never one & done. This current streak would extend to 6-0 with 4 knockouts before he lost to Márquez, and then Pacquiao in their rematch directly afterward. Then came two in a row against low-level opposition, then his unsatisfying loss to Khan, then another pair before retiring once and for all)

Fana was ranked #1 by the WBC - having squeaked by previously unbeaten Filipino puncher Randy Suico via SD - and thus had "earned" his shot as Barrera's mandatory for his super featherweight green belt, and yet the "Rose of Khayelitsha" had not fought anybody of note aside from Suico and the also undefeated yet very green future IBO welterweight titlist (and 3x legitimate world title challenger @ lightweight), Ali Funeka...who managed to drop Fana in defeat. He also had lost twice against journeymen already - one a South African compatriot, the other a light-hitting Brit.

This lack of high-level experience showed, needless to say. Fana struggled to get Barrera's respect early, and by the closing bracket of the first set of bells he was already patently discouraged and had resorted to playing keep-away, strewing in a few defensive body jabs here and there but mostly electing to engage as little as possible. Barrera was a trim & muscular 130lbs on the nose, having spent an extra fortnight in Big Bear training for an opponent on whom there was very little tape to study.

The only thing Fana brought to the table was a passing fair jab - which amounted to having brought a machete to a bazooka fight. Barrera had a vastly superior jab, and made a point of emphasizing that for about five minutes of action before getting bored and dispatching Fana with a devastating four-piece (left hook downstairs, right overhand, left jab, right cross on the chin).

Mzonke remained shell-shocked for several minutes. He would eventually get up, and in the remainder of his career despite going an uneven 16-10 manage to become a two-time IBF super featherweight champion. In the moment, however, in 2005, nobody was impressed by this matchmaking, nor the decision by the relatively new Golden Boy Promotions to elect to put what most perceived - before and even more so after the fact - as being a mismatch showcase for Barrera in the headlining slot of a PPV. The reputation of the company (in which Marco was becoming a vested business partner) and Marco himself would take a slight hit for this underwhelming blowout.

 

#11 Marco Antonio Barrera Tapia vs. Agapito Sánchez

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"You dirty yellow bellied rat". James Cagney directed this famous (but oft-misquoted) line at co-star David Landau in the film Taxi!, but he may as well have been gazing several decades ahead into a crystal ball at the most notorious pugilist to ever crawl out from the muck of La Victoria to infest the international scene.

This was Barrera's third lefty opponent, and his thirteenth contest scheduled for a full twelve rounds (of an eventual final tally of 43 contests - more than half of those fought in his career!) - but, much like the city of New Orleans a decade later, he was unprepared for and nearly undone by the Cyclone making a beeline toward him. This one had an eye on his WBO super bantamweight title, and was prepared to pull out all the stops.

Points were deducted for Agapito's numerous fouls in rounds one and eight - and that was David Avalos being extraordinarily restrained (or munificent toward Sánchez, if you will). The low-blowing Dominican copped his first warning just ninety seconds after the opening bell, having set the stage already with, by my count, half a dozen hooks delivered squarely & flagrantly into Barrera's protective cup. :yikes The less attentive (or perhaps more forgiving in what they consider flagrantly low) commentators wouldn't credit him on-air with reaching that amount until a quarter way into the fight, at the start of the fourth - but still. That's a very high frequency of low blows, from a guy who already had a filthy reputation and for which the officials should have been on alert from the beginning, and doling out warnings for at least every other transgression (and maybe a point docked for every fifth one). :nod

Barrera had to put up with an ocean liner's bilge worth of fouls throughout, and Sánchez got his licks in here & there zipping around the ring sprinkling in counters, but this was a crystalline shutout through eleven. There was never a moment where Sánchez wasn't in retreat, throwing & landing fewer & less effective shots, and resorting multiple times per minute to desperate low blows just to fend Barrera off, with his quick feet working double-time for the full twelve frames and still not keeping him clear of danger as the cerebral Assassin, who just as contentedly and efficiently whacked the body in pursuit when Sánchez managed to deny the Mexican a clear look at his own head as the first choice of target.

I'm not 100% on this but this might actually have been my very first time seeing Barrera fight (and I'm not sure whether it was live or a replay); either way I do have a vivid recollection of Sánchez cutting a rug, trying in vain to get out ahead of Barrera or match him shot for shot. I remember being in awe of the coolly poised Mexican in the black trunks, patiently demurring as the hyperactive wriggler in tri-color shorts bounced around (using lots of jittery motion to set up his awkward pecks and reach-in swats) and then, when & only when he saw an opening present itself, clapping the body loudly or jabbing with the accuracy of a sniper.

David Avalos, to be fair, had by this point had a long night on the clock. He was the only referee on the whole card, working five bouts with a combined total of 34 completed rounds. That said, he bungled the final round of the night - and quite badly, at that. MAB was himself robbed of what should have been a straightforward KD ruling about 45 seconds into round 12, and then moments later when he pounced on Sánchez going for the finish, was shoved away by a frantic Sánchez and fell on his ass, inexplicably given a count by Avalos while Sánchez was sent to a neutral corner, himself in stunned disbelief.

Sánchez would later defeat Óscar Larios, and was competitive (in a fashion, in his way, heavily reliant as ever on dirty tactics) with a prime Manny Pacquiao, before he ran afoul of Joan Guzmán and received what many fans considered his long-overdue comeuppance by suffering his first genuine knockout loss in a one-sided beat-down. The following year, El Ciclón would meet a tragic end a decade after the loss to Barrera, shot by an off-duty Air Force sergeant in his native DR for unwittingly hitting on the jealous officer's girl. At the risk of disrespecting the departed - it has to be said that he died as he lived; right until the bitter end, he couldn't stop breaking the rules or annoying people regardless of their inclination or ability to inflict punitive damage on him for it.

 

#10 Marco Antonio Barrera Tapia vs. Kevin Philip Kelley

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I feel bad putting the Flushing Flash this low, but a) that's how deep MAB's résumé is, that a very good fighter just barely makes his ten best victories, and b) circumstances being what they are, he can not conscionably be put any higher.

Kelley debuted in the pros just 14 months earlier, but was seven years older and clearly winding down. The fifteen year veteran had been knocked out by Morales on late notice and had then been absent from the ring for nearly two years. In his return he sandwiched a close scrape over young Humberto Soto between a couple of stoppages over nobodies.

For those keeping score, KPK would be MAB's eighth lefty opponent - and until the point, arguably, the all-around best - certainly better than Eddie Cook, Frankie Toledo, Agapito Sánchez, Jesse Magana, José Luis Valbuena, and Enrique José Sánchez León - with the only real candidate for superiority being Naseem Hamed (and that's a tough split; technically Prince Naz had vanquished him by 4th round KO in their h2h meeting, but that doesn't paint a complete picture. They were each down thrice in a brutal war, in which both had the look of possibly being stopped; it just happened to be Kelley's fate to lose it, but you got the feeling on another night it might've swung his way...besides, styles make fights and Kelley didn't have the albatross of the Ingle gym foibles lurking in his game as weaknesses for MAB to exploit) - although his immediate successor would be a doozy of a young Filipino just on the verge of breaking out into superstardom.

On this date, Barrera had wanted to challenge Óscar "Chololo" Larios, a fellow Mexican who recently had become the WBC titlist at super bantam, promoting himself from interim status with a violent blitz of the regular champ Willie Jorrín. Alas, whatever the reason (George Foreman opined that Barrera was the sport's ultimate "who needs 'em?" fighter at that moment, being a dangerous p4p level fighter with no hardware and therefore as bad a risk for reward proposition as could be found) Larios was unavailable, leaving us deprived of an internecine all-Mexico classic, quite possibly a FOTY candidate and battle for the ages. Barrera, for his part, was left with the unsavory task of making it two in a row against "golden oldies" at featherweight, having meant for his victory lap to be a mere one-off in his previous triumph over friend Johnny Tapia.

The Flushing Flash talked a big game, and I honestly believe he wanted to knock Barrera out, and had convinced himself he could turn the clock back and do it. He clearly put in the work in training camp, coming in fit & ready (if anything overdoing it a bit for a man of his age, as the physician that inspected him for licensing purposes did make a note that he seemed a little weakened) - but it was plain as day within less than ninety seconds that he didn't belong in the same ring as the Baby Faced Assassin at the peak of his "Blue Period" (although tonight clad in black & silver), wherein he reinvented himself as a boxer-puncher nonpareil. The first knockdown was simply a bloop on the jaw, a short right hand stuffed in almost as an afterthought behind a missed jab as Kelley himself flurried his way in too close, like Icarus flying near the sun - and it froze Kelley just long enough for Marco to link the chain with a short left hook on the opposite jaw, dumping the Queens native on the seat of his pants. The next couple of rounds were academic, with Barrera content to just counter-punch his way to a methodical dissection of a jittery and pugnacious as ever but visibly scared Kelley.

Worth noting is that Barrera's usually vicious temperament may have in part been fueled by the additional rage simmering beneath the surface in his personal life around this period. By autumn of this year, when he fought Manny Pacquiao, he would be deeply embroiled in a divorce - from both his bitterly estranged (and ultimately loathed) wife, and his erstwhile management team before Golden Boy Promotions "rescued" him from the latter's exploitative clutches. When either of these issues started exactly is a matter for conjecture and not publicly known, but if you watch him biting down on his gum shield as he bit down on poor Kelley's body with his spiteful punches, it doesn't require all that great a leap to envision the Flash as burning in effigy of his enemies, flashing red before the raging bull's eyes.

 

#9 Marco Antonio Barrera Tapia vs. Ricardo Juárez II

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It seems weird addressing this one before their first encounter, but we are doing a countdown to his most quality triumphs - and this is the lesser of the victories (IMO, for reasons I will explain) and thus must be the numerically higher antecedent.

First, a word on Rocky Juárez:

At this point he was 25-2 with eighteen kayos -and his only two defeats were both extremely, bitterly close decisions against Mexican greats. First he came within a round on two judges' cards of upsetting Humberto Soto for the interim WBC featherweight title in 2005, and then exactly nine months later came that ultimately controversial first try with Barrera. On that night, Rocky had surprised MAB with his ability to intelligently force a slug-fest and drag him from his comfort zone. Regardless of how one scored that contest, nobody else had given MAB anywhere close to as difficult a night's work in this millennium - without bearing the last name Morales or Pacquiao.

Marco was determined to show that all the improvements and refinements in his technical game over the previous dozen fights (starting with Salud) had culminated in his ring IQ being almost unparalleled in the sport, with his only peers being contemporaries (and both, for different stretches of time, business partners in GBP) Bernard Hopkins and Floyd Mayweather Jr. - in that elite class of boxers able to, especially in a rematch after having scouted an opponent for 12 rounds, completely neutralize every facet of a world class fighter's offense and control a fight against them without breaking a sweat. Ultimately, the Houston native would meet him midway to make this possible in the rematch.

Here was Rocky's undoing:
https://www.boxingforum24.com/threads/juárez-simply-needs-to-find-another-gear.178707/

...which isn't to say that Barrera shouldn't be credited with rising above his level from their meeting a few months earlier. He did. This was a case of each combatant moving in opposite directions - Juárez shrinking further into sullen complacency, his already shaky willpower doubtless having been dislodged by the first loss, and Barrera building upon what he did that night in Los Angeles, putting on those few extra little refinements to leave plenty of distance between them.

Barrera had coaxed the boo-birds out in force by the calculatedly strategic and low-output eighth, as he began to comprehensively outbox an increasingly tired, frustrated & disinterested Juárez with precise jabs and fluid movement. The blood-lusting mouth-breathers at the MGM Grand would continue this disrespectful nonsense all the way until the final bell, as Barrera continued to box in a beautiful textbook manner and sap all the proverbial wind (what little remained) from Rocky's sails.

This is where I feel the bulk of the boxing community - not just the casual fans - really turned on the Baby Faced Assassin, having once lauded him for his self-transformative prowess from Salud onward, but now bemoaning too much of a good thing as his style continued to evolve. The sting of these fickle bitches' betrayal is made all the more poignant by the fact that Barrera (who had to win over the casual Mexican fans especially the hard way, coming as he did from a middle-class background, by earning respect by way of sheer force and displays of in-ring bravado) was at this time in his career doing exactly everything that he had ever been asked to do: improving his ring IQ and chasing after the biggest challenges. It is a shame that he reached the apex of his craft - and participated in some of his most important and defining matches (ie Márquez and Pacquiao II, both UD losses, immediately after closing the book on the Juárez rivalry) - just as his physical abilities and popularity were, in inverse proportion to his swelling boxing brain, both in the midst of a gradual yet marked decline. In hindsight it may appear foolish that Barrera was setting a course for another clash with Pacquiao, but one can forgive his hubris if you consider a few factors: 1) the first match hasn't been entirely non-competitive before Rudy Pérez threw in the white towel, with Barrera even dropping Pacquiao in the opener, and winning at least one more round on all three judges' scorecards , 2) extenuating circumstances had arguably impacted his performance that night, whether or not haters want to brush this off as "excuse-making", and 3) common opponents had fared well enough against Pacquiao to give him confidence that with a solid training camp behind him and his newfound ability to make the necessary tweaks in his game before a rematch as he did versus Juárez, he could avenge the ignominious 11th round TKO loss. Morales had beaten Pacquiao, and Márquez had drawn with him...while Agapito Sánchez gave him a much harder night's work than he gave Barrera. He was deadlocked at .500 against Filipinos, and wanted to retire with a winning record against them. Alas.

To say nothing of the fact that, 4) MAB was always a proud person, often to a fault. This can plainly be seen as he got in Rocky's face the moment the final bell rang, jawing at him, frothing at the mouth for a thirteenth round as he wasn't done marking his territory with figurative urine like a dog set on proving itself the alpha. He didn't care that for the last third of the contest Rocky had stopped trying, or that a chorus of resounding boos were levied at him - all he cared about was rectifying the insult of people claiming that he was "past it" as of Juárez I and couldn't hang with good fighters anymore. Having clearly delineated himself on this go-round as the better man, he was satisfied. And because of that same macho pride, he wasn't going to be satisfied with leaving the story of the Pacquiao rivalry on the note it had thus far ended. He didn't care if the fans were going to boo him in the rematch heading in, or even after the scorecards were read if he did spring the upset - he just wanted to balance the scales, and (including vs. Salud) put himself up 2-1 against the Philippines. And lay claim to having bagged a victory over the best southpaw he would ever face, having been troubled by lefties off and on for his entire campaign.

A couple of editorial notes/meta tidbits on this one:

1. It would be, chronologically speaking, the last on this list of Barrera's seventeen greatest wins.
   
2. This was also the last of Barrera's matches that I watched prior to actually joining this forum a couple of months afterwards. Starting about 2-3 years earlier and up through November of 2006, my contributions were limited to comments on the main page articles. I'm not sure what took me so long to actually make the jump onto the boards, although it was this around this period that I began lurking and reading threads as "guest", checking out everybody's RBR scorecards for matches such as this very one, and Tarver vs. Hopkins a short time later. It feels weird to have been posting on here for so long, and to reflect that all of my favorite boxer's seventeen most important victories had already transpired before my join date. Especially as his career wouldn't officially end for another half a decade. For me, though, he should have retired after the Pacquiao rematch (which was a windmill tilting if ever there was one; he was always going to lose that one, but it was inevitable that it would happen as it was the only thing keeping him in the game after the Morales rubber match, chasing it like Ahab after the white whale) or better yet after the Juan Manuel Márquez loss (his last great performance) or better still after Juárez II (his last great win). Everything after that wasn't really Marco, it was a shell. The fact that Amir Khan gets to have a name like that on his record grinds my gears. None of the four victories Barrera picked up after Pacquiao are worth the indignity of having a well-past-prime loss to Amir Khan on his record, especially in a contest that was barely underway and just barely past the cutoff point to have been rendered a dignity-preserving No Contest. :verysad

 

#8 Marco Antonio Barrera Tapia vs. Ricardo Juárez I

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And now we rewind a few months, circling back to a night that exemplified both the overarching narrative of Rocky Juárez's "bitterly close yet no cigar" ring campaign, as well as MAB's "grit through and seize greatness by any means necessary" legacy.

Juárez came in with high hopes, hype to match, and soaring confidence - an Olympic silver medalist with power in both fists and recently forcing Humberto Soto into a life and death battle in a close decision loss challenging for the interim WBC featherweight title - yet was a 3½-1 underdog, something both Larry Merchant (even a broken clock is right twice a day) and Emanuel Steward vehemently disagreed with.

By the night's end, nobody agreed that Juárez had any business having been that wide an underdog. They also weren't convinced he wasn't robbed (of, if not victory, at least a fair draw). As to all that hullabaloo...let's meet the judges' panel:

Anek Hongtongkam of Thailand judged 80 professional bouts over a three decade period, from 1985 until 2015. If you sift through his record, he mostly did a very good job with his scorecards generally in line with prevailing journalistic and fan opinions, as well as fairly close to (sometimes the balancing mean average of) his peers in each match. If anything, his cards reveal a slight bias for aggressors over pure boxers, and yet he is the one judge that had it widest for Barrera. He actually even scored round 3 for Juárez (in which Barrera was visibly stunned before the bell), as did Morita but, curiously, not Duane Ford, the lone judge scoring it for Juárez and thus rendering the "split" decision.

Duane Ford is another championship match judging veteran, a staple in Las Vegas for 35 years, from 1978 (two years before Rocky Juárez's birth, and while MAB was still in diapers) until 2013. 619 bouts judged, with an inordinate percentage of those being for world titles: 102, over 16%.

Ken Morita was actually the longest-serving judge of this evening's trio (although Ford was the most prolific, scoring thrice as many as Morita's 217 bouts logged between 1967 and 2011 ... 28 of them world title bouts, +132 more as referee), putting in 44 years starting just a few after his own retirement from in-ring competition. Morita was a feather-fisted but iron-chinned journeyman, with a final record of 10-8-3, all 21 bouts going the distance.

So, a competent assembly, on paper. In theory we shouldn't have any wildly disparate 118-110 cards in opposite directions...but just how in sync (with each other, the fans, Harold Lederman, and myself) would they prove to be over twelve rounds?

R1

1. Morita 10-9 Barrera
2. Ford 10-9 Barrera
3. Hongtongkam 10-9 Barrera
4. IB 10-9 Barrera, but very close, Juárez commanded respect from the get-go with his stiff jab, Barrera cinched it with a late flourish, SRL-style.
   
5. Lederman 10-9 Barrera
6. EyeOnTheRing (fan aggregate) 10-9 Barrera

R2

1. Morita 10-9 Barrera
2. Ford 10-9 Juárez
3. Hongtongkam 10-9 Barrera
4. IB 10-9 Juárez, close, this one came down to quality (and creativity) of power shots as they nullified each other's jabs with mutually excellent defense. Barrera had a nice straight right lead piercing Juárez's guard but the best stuff was a compact left hook on the chin from Juárez cutting inside.
   
5. Lederman 10-9 Barrera
6. EyeOnTheRing (fan aggregate) 10-9 Barrera

R3

1. Morita 10-9 Juárez
2. Ford 10-9 Barrera
3. Hongtongkam 10-9 Juárez
4. IB 10-9 Juárez, with Barrera still busier if not more accurate. Juárez blocking & shooting well-timed counters with urgent torque behind them, his aim staying true. Huge left hook before the bell, almost scored a KD.
   
5. Lederman 10-9 Juárez
6. EyeOnTheRing (fan aggregate) 10-9 Juárez

R4

1. Morita 10-9 Barrera
2. Ford 10-9 Barrera
3. Hongtongkam 10-9 Barrera
4. IB 10-9 Barrera, again not a whitewash, but the body shots do give him a clear edge. Barrera towing a thin line, however, as he is nearly docked a point (warned sternly) for straying low.
   
5. Lederman 10-9 Barrera
6. EyeOnTheRing (fan aggregate) 10-9 Barrera

R5

1. Morita 10-9 Juárez
2. Ford 10-9 Barrera
3. Hongtongkam 10-9 Barrera
4. IB 10-9 Barrera, close, out-slugged Juárez in the pocket throughout but was clipped with a hard left hook with half a minute left...
   
5. Lederman 10-9 Barrera
6. EyeOnTheRing (fan aggregate) 10-9 Barrera

R6

1. Morita 10-9 Barrera
2. Ford 10-9 Barrera
3. Hongtongkam 10-9 Barrera
4. IB 10-9 Barrera, clear-cut, despite Juárez starting very strong, drawing first blood with a lead right and jabbing the body well in the first minute; Barrera took over with a steady jab while moving laterally and uppercuts/rabbit punches on the ref's blind side up close.
   
5. Lederman 10-9 Barrera
6. EyeOnTheRing (fan aggregate) 10-9 Barrera

R7

1. Morita 10-9 Barrera
2. Ford 10-9 Juárez
3. Hongtongkam 10-9 Juárez
4. IB 10-9 Barrera, gutted it out IMO despite breathing heavily and even losing his gum shield in an exchange. Juárez applied incredible pressure but also got tagged far more than he landed.
   
5. Lederman 10-9 Barrera
6. EyeOnTheRing (fan aggregate) 10-9 Barrera

R8

1. Morita 10-9 Juárez
2. Ford 10-9 Juárez
3. Hongtongkam 10-9 Juárez
4. IB 10-9 Juárez, patiently springing traps and landing accurate counters on an ever untidier Barrera, who is forcing his war-torn aging body into levels of exertion to which only an elite few have pushed him. Panic setting in, he spits out the gum shield multiple times and Raul Caiz admonishes him for the final time. Next spit will cost a point.
   
5. Lederman 10-9 Juárez
6. EyeOnTheRing (fan aggregate) 10-9 Juárez

R9

1. Morita 10-9 Juárez
2. Ford 10-9 Juárez
3. Hongtongkam 10-9 Barrera
4. IB 10-9 Juárez, close, staying in Barrera's chest nonstop, forcing him to clinch. Very few clean shots either way, and some good ones downstairs from Barrera. Juárez reaching him with just enough soaring rights the graze the hairline, and left hooks on the liver.
   
5. Lederman 10-9 Juárez
6. EyeOnTheRing (fan aggregate) 10-9 Juárez

R10

1. Morita 10-9 Juárez
2. Ford 10-9 Juárez
3. Hongtongkam 10-9 Juárez
4. IB 10-9 Juárez, growing dominant, making Barrera look almost vulnerable at times. Barrera's scantly coagulated nose is busted reopen with uppercuts. MAB's chin and will - both long believed to be iron - being tested here. Passing...barely...
   
5. Lederman 10-9 Juárez
6. EyeOnTheRing (fan aggregate) 10-9 Juárez

R11

1. Morita 10-9 Barrera
2. Ford 10-9 Juárez
3. Hongtongkam 10-9 Barrera
4. IB 10-9 Barrera, very close, a nasty brawl edged by the champ by a narrow margin, primarily on the strength of some mighty pendulums into Juárez's core.
   
5. Lederman 10-9 Barrera
6. EyeOnTheRing (fan aggregate) 10-9 Barrera

R12

1. Morita 10-10
2. Ford 10-10
3. Hongtongkam 10-9 Juárez
4. IB 10-9 Juárez, surging with a passionate onslaught, knowing this is the fight of his life and not wanting to leave it to chance, attempting to smash the champion to pieces. Barrera protecting his turf like a guard doberman, but getting his bell rung as he swings for the fences (mixed-metaphor triple-threat! )
   
5. Lederman 10-9 Barrera
6. EyeOnTheRing (fan aggregate) 10-9 Barrera

114-114 draw on my card. 116-112 for MAB on both Harold Lederman's and the EyeOnTheRing card. Here was the official verdict as initially read by Michael Buffer on the HBO broadcast:

Ford 115-113 Juárez
Hongtongkam 115-113 Barrera
Morita 114-114

...a split draw. This result stood for about half an hour, until Armando García, the head of the CSAC, informed all the involved parties (including both dressing rooms, and the HBO team) of a transcriptional error, when the scores had been copied from each judges' individual marking card onto the master scoresheet. Ford and Morita had both scored the final round even, 10-10, but whichever commission rep hastily scribbled them onto the master sheet must have been distracted or was just dissociating for a moment, because they didn't see the number "10" underneath Barrera's name in the right-hand column on the marking cards...their eye passed over the left-hand column with a "10" beneath Juárez's name and their mind filled in the blank, assuming it was 10-9 for Juárez. The correction rendered the following official verdict:

Ford 115-114 Juárez
Hongtongkam 115-113 Barrera
Morita 114-113

...SD for Barrera.


Needless to say, this gaffe was met with no small degree of controversy, especially with Barrera at this point in time being a partner in GBP. It was, however, an honest mistake - albeit a stupid one. IMO, this was a screw-job of Juárez, but not in terms of corruption (I fully believe that Armando García was acting in good faith and there was no such "editing" hanky-panky as Rocky's team accused them of) - to me, blame ought to be lain at the feet of Duane Ford and Ken Morita for copping out and scoring a critical round in a close fight 10-10, when it really was a close but clear Juárez round by my reckoning. It was indeed the fight of Rocky's life, and he poured it all out in that fateful twelfth, and it should have merited the pyrrhic reward of, if not capturing the super featherweight title, at least having fought a legend in MAB to a draw...as he believed he in fact had, all too briefly...