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

#7 Marco Antonio Barrera Tapia vs. Robert Lloyd Peden

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Bring on the Bomber!

This was MAB's follow-up to his very poorly received PPV main event against Mzonke Fana, so expectations were high. Peden - not a complete unknown to US audiences (having fought Armando Cordoba, Lamont Pearson, JMM and Nate Campebll on American television already) but nor a household name - had better ought to put up a fight and come off like a real contender, and Barrera had better ought to impress against him, boy howdy. The heavy-handed Aussie, enthralling & mystifying the crowd at the MGM Grand by entering the ring to a didgeridoo in homage to his Aboriginal roots, certainly had the street cred among hardcore boxing observers, having knocked out Campbell for the second time in their rematch at home down under to prove the infamous "free shot" kayo was no fluke, and in the process capture the vacant IBF 140lb title which he offered into the unification kitty w/ MAB's green belt. He also had solid auxiliary victories over world ranked foes like Cordoba, Pearson & Hector Velázquez - lest anybody think he was just a "Galaxxy Warrior" specialist who mightn't have been world class outside having one particular guy's number. On paper he was no ...well, piece of tissue paper waiting to be crumpled like Fana.

Peden fought pretty well from the outset - but pretty well against MAB is woefully insufficient.

There may have been an element of revenge on Barrera's mind - he did, all things considered, possess a bit of a mean streak and hair-trigger pride...both of which traits endeared him to his Mexican fan base. A few years earlier, Peden, then a sparring partner for Barrera, had accidentally broken his rib ahead of the Morales rematch. It was ultimately a non-factor and didn't affect the outcome, but it did cause Marco a not inconsiderable amount of stress in the lead-up thinking his lucrative and legacy-defining rematch might be postponed or canceled. Barrera was probably never one to "lightly" spar, especially in prep for a huge match, but reportedly Peden got a little caught up in the heat of the moment and went harder than Barrera was expecting (or perhaps than both men had mutually agreed upon in advance for that particular session) and was eager to hone body-punching skills he was hopeful would serve him for his own upcoming match, against JMM. Greedily, he wound up hurting the boss...and it may have come around to bite him in the ass. Barrera seemed to be carrying Peden at times, landing at will but easing off the gas pedal just enough to let Peden regain confidence and come forward some more...toying with him, picking apart, doling out more & more pain all night, death by a thousand cuts.

Peden, with his style, needed to be in his approach here more "Rocky Juárez I" ...but was closer to "Rocky Juárez II" (and not even quite reaching that benchmark, as unlike Juárez in the MAB rematch, the Bomber here arguably lost every round). He kept sort of trying all night, coming in a distant second-best frame after frame, but never exactly going into retreat or giving one away entirely. He did just enough to have put in ~30% of the quality work in each three minute span. As with the Agapito Sánchez fight, MAB would in truth pitch a beautiful shutout despite a dance partner with an uncooperative and/or unflattering style - only to have the record marred by questionable (if academic) officiating: a pity round from all three judges, plus a point taken by Richard Steele for a low blow in R10. Ironically, this was perhaps the dirtiest match of Barrera's career since he fought Agapito - except in this one it him perpetrating all the fouls - hits low, behind the head, on the break, and even after the bell (furthering my aforementioned theory of Barrera wanting to punish Robbie for the rib injury). Richard Steele was - before and after the tenth - letting it all slide, however, and Peden was powerless to deal out his own punitive deterrents, so in the words of Jim Lampley, "why not?"...and the answer should have been "well, because it'll cost you having pitched a flawless shutout", but for Keane, Moretti and Pernick having rendered that a moot point anyway by throwing Peden a bone.

Harold Lederman, interestingly, had it even closer than any of them, 116-110 - somehow finding the 4th, 6th, and 10th in favor of the Bomber. I'm not sure which round(s) each judge found to give Peden, but I suppose it would likely be from among those...although even they were still to my view clearly dominated by MAB.

I hate to say it, but this was in a way a reflection on trainer Roger Bloodworth: he always took up these just-this-side-of-hopeless causes...guys like Peden, Fernando Vargas, Andrew Golota, etc. - who in many ways had every tool you could ask for, but just couldn't put it all together. All of them reached that plateau of "very good, but not great" - which is where I'd rank Bloodworth himself, overall. When you have a team of All Time Greats like Rudy Pérez and Marco Antonio Barrera in the opposite corner, that isn't going to cut the mustard. I'm sure a lot of younger fans will scratch their heads wondering at Peden's choice to fight Barrera for all twelve rounds with his left arm held so low, except not fully adopting the Philly shell - as he was no slick defensive wizard by any stretch - and winging the odd hook off his lead hip but never catapulting himself inside with desperate pressure like a Rocky Juárez or even just spamming his power shots with a simplistic yet uninterrupted and persistent in-and-out step like a Manny Pacquiao - but honestly it had served him well enough against the likes of Campbell and Pearson...and he wasn't the kind of pro that was going to learn from his losses (with both John Brown and Juan Manuel "Dinamita" Márquez exploiting his flaws expertly) - he just did one thing, did it fairly well, and hoped for the best. Which is why history remembers him as being merely a "pretty good fighter" and footnote in the careers of MAB and JMM, and even to an extent his two-time conquest Nate Campbell.

 

#6 Marco Antonio Barrera Tapia vs. Paul Anthony Ayala

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How does one recover from being knocked out for the first time in one's career, at the combustible hands of a prime Manny Pacquiao? Easy (if you are on the All-Time-Great level of a MAB, that is) - just dial it back a touch [just a touch!] and deal a fellow erstwhile bantamweight champion (and Johnny Tapia rival) their first knockout loss.

There had been some histrionics seven months earlier from every corner of the boxing community, demanding that Barrera immediately hang 'em up following the loss to Pacquiao, saying it proved he was completely done, once and for all (remember this was 8½ years past his initial retirement, after defeating Jiménez for his first world title). Of course those people - including vocal and earnestly pom-pom waving MAB cheerleader Jim Lampley - were all made to look increasingly more & more foolish over his next half a dozen outings. Those people, in fairness, may not have known all the facts that later came to light regarding Barrera's trials & tribulations in both his personal & professional life in the run-up to Pacquiao I. That said, based on what did transpire in the ring, knowing what they did, they still come off as having more than slightly overreacted. Barrera wasn't disgraced against Pacquiao; he dropped him early, hung around until nearly the final bell, and was stopped by a prime buzzsaw fast approaching the upper echelon of p4p lists. So what? Factoring in everything that was going on behind the scenes with MAB, the fact that he lasted eleven and was as competitive as he could manage for that long was itself pretty remarkable.

Anyway, that was in the past, and Pacquiao had become water under the bridge...for now. Barrera was of course dead-set on proving all the doubters wrong and carving a path of destruction through everyone in the featherweight range until he was given a shot at redemption.

Poor old Paulie found himself first up in the cross-bearing and demonically obsessed Assassin's cross-hairs. He was still a world class opponent - just a couple of years removed from having been the Ring junior featherweight champion, and less than 5 removed from a pair of FOTY candidates against Johnny Tapia. Having said all that - he was the obvious choice for a "safe" victim to maul in the post-Pacquiao warpath. He was older (by four years), smaller (being a natural bantamweight; granted Barrera had fought at lighter weights than Ayala ever had in their early careers, but nobody considers MAB a natural flyweight...in his late teens and early twenties he was yet to attain his mantle of "man-strength", and wouldn't fill into his frame until super bantam if not feather), and weaker (he was dropped by light-hitting bantam Hugo Dianza, then bullied around the ring for 12 rounds by Marco's arch-rival El Terrible).

He also committed the cardinal sin of being a southpaw - and by virtue of being one sealed his fate and put himself on the chopping block of "name" fighters that Barrera could dominate to kick off his comeback. To say that Barrera enjoyed beating up lefties throughout his career would be an understatement. To say that he wanted to whip a southpaw's ass more than ever in the direct aftermath of Pacquiao I goes without saying. Plus, there was the added luster of being able to h2h 1-up his nemesis Morales, which he did, emphatically. Have I mentioned yet that MAB could be a mean-spirited and petty SOB?

Harold Lederman couldn't find a single round for Ayala. I'm not sure how you could. I don't believe any of the official judges did. You honestly wouldn't have to search too hard to find a round besides the eighth (when Barrera folded Ayala in half with a pair of savage left hooks) to have scored 10-8 even without a knockdown, especially among the later ones.

By the final crumpling of Ayala in round 10, it had become a merciful act, with not just the ref but the whole crowd of spectators hoping that Barrera would unload just such a barrage to end Paulie's misery. It was the sort of beating top-flight pugilists don't easily recover from - and in Ayala's case, at 34, he didn't feel up to even trying. He announced that very night that he was going to have preliminary retirement talks with his wife...and indeed, his better half seems to have appealed to all the best angels of his nature, as he wisely opted never to set foot in a ring again. For him, unlike with Barrera in his previous bout, this stoppage loss in the championship rounds did in fact mean that it was quitting time and that his body wasn't up to any more wars against elites.

MAB wasn't done with elites...no sir. This victory over Ayala was ostensibly supposed to have set up a challenge of In-Jin Chi. In a serendipitous turn of events, that didn't pan out, but that door closing opened another onto the single fight Barrera wanted more than any other besides a Pacquiao rematch: the chance to go up 2-1 in the Morales trilogy.

 

#5 Marco Antonio Barrera Tapia vs. John Lee Anthony Tapia (no relation )

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Ah, now this one is near & dear to my heart...

Johnny Tapia is my hands-down favorite boxer of the 1990's...and he is flanked on either side as FOTD (my fave-of-the-decade) by close personal friends (from the 80's: his amateur teammate & traveling buddy Mike Tyson, and from the aughts: his conqueror and torch recipient MAB). Longtime posters will remember that my original avatar on ESB was of Tapia hugging Barrera post-fight, and they understand the personal significance of this match and why it was so bittersweet for me: two fighters that were instrumental (perhaps the most influential, my inclination to root for both of them in all their other fights paralleled only by my desire to root against Naseem Hamed) to my deepening of interest and ultimate transition from casual to diehard, side by side, chumming around once the final bell rang despite having inflicted numerous bruises and lacerations on each other (more in one direction than another)...the changing of the guard, an older, bigger (sentimental) favorite bested at the hands of a newer, objectively greater favorite.

No, they were not related (although Marco's mother's maiden name - which he stitched onto his boxing trunks - was indeed Tapia, and on her side he did have an uncle Miguel who lived in Johnny's hometown of Albuquerque) but they were friends. They knew, liked and respected each other. That hadn't stopped Johnny from knocking out Marco's brother Jorge in 1997 for the WBO super flyweight title - but that was just business. And this wasn't Barrera seeking out revenge; this was business. In fact it was Tapia who sought him out, wanting to give himself the stiffest possible test in his new stomping grounds by going after the best featherweight in the world, even if that meant trading leather with a pal.

My pal @Addie - the only poster on here (at least the only fellow non-Mexican) that can maybe lay claim to being a bigger MAB fanatic than I am - compiled a "greatest hits" cache of Barrera animated GIF images last year...of which this one is my personal fave:

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In less than eight seconds, everything I love about both men encapsulated - perhaps better than I could possibly hope to convey in mere words on my best day.

Now, a cynic might look at this and wonder if maybe I'm letting my emotions cloud my judgment and rating the victory over Tapia higher than it deserves. I'd dismiss these cynics with a quote from the Black Mamba himself, aka Uncle Roger..."Most people DKSAB". They certainly, if they weren't around in the 90's...or even if they were, and make an ignorant statement like "Tapia was old and didn't belong at featherweight; this isn't that great a win" - they clearly DKSA Mi Vida Loca.

We're talking about someone who started his career 46-0-2 ..and not fighting cupcakes, either. From his pro debut he went undefeated for over eleven years, and was only ever defeated by a single opponent (a very good one, Paulie Ayala) in anything even remotely close to his prime (and it was on its downturn in '99, if he was even still in his prime)...and that was at super bantamweight. Tapia fought the majority of his bouts for better part of a decade at super fly, which is honestly his natural weight. At a push you could maybe say he was a natural bantam - but Johnny was the epitome of the adage "it ain't the size of the dog in the fight, but the fight in the dog". Then after thirteen years on the job he trudges up to featherweight and becomes a 5x world champion in a third weight class, upsetting the fourth reign of solid incumbent (and true-blue natural 126lber) Juan Manuel "El Mantecas" Rubio Medina. In a pure baller move, not content to have cut the path of least resistance to simply babysit a title and milk some easy defenses, lest he give anyone the ammunition to call him a paper champ, Tapia immediately dumped the belt so that he could test his mettle against the consensus #1 feather on earth - a man who didn't hold any of the ABC titles but was recognized as "the man" by Ring Magazine ...as well as by anybody with a clue that followed the sport.

Even if nobody else quite believed he would be able to climb this mountain (Barrera was a horse of a completely different color than Medina...clear on the other side of the good vs. great divide), Johnny himself believed. At the risk of sounding too cynical, it may well be that his own trainer exploited that belief for personal gain while not quite sharing it. Freddie Roach had already stumbled - fairly recently at this point (only 1½ years having passed since Pac vs. Ledwaba) - upon a goldmine in the much younger Emanuel Dapidran Pacquiao (without the homegrown American fan base of a Tapia, but on the other end of the punching-power spectrum, and with fewer years & rounds on his tread and thus a lot more upside) and his previous star pupil James Toney had already lapsed into some very inconsistent ballooning habits, boxing his way into contention at cruiser and then literally eating himself out, with brief stints at heavyweight borne of sheer endomorphic necessity (true, he still had important victories over Jirov and Holyfield ahead of him, but the decline would be precipitous ...and excruciating to watch thereafter, and it wasn't long before Freddie bailed on him). It could be that Roach foresaw that his new charge having a showdown with MAB was plausible, or even inevitable, and decided to use Tapia for a guineapig -cum-sacrificial-lamb, having a look at what MAB was capable of in the opposing corner and trying some things out against him. Just saying...

Tapia may have been a good deal older, smaller, and lighter-hitting than Barrera, yes - and they were good friends outside the ring - but that didn't stop them from pummeling each other literally black & blue for 12 exhilarating rounds. Tapia was still a world class talent (for a natural super fly to have just dethroned a sitting featherweight titlist, he needed to be...all the more to do so without much KO power, even down in his native division) and he pushed Marco to find a new level, in what is, by my estimation the finest ring performance of his career (the schooling of Hamed was his greatest strategic performance, minor but important distinction), at least in terms of the violent innovation and fluidity of his signature all-inclusive (body+head) combination punching. Even with two blackened eyes, Tapia's crazy little ass was still eager to jump inside and take all of the best shots MAB could dish out - just to prove he could, and that he could hit back the moment Barrera let up. Tapia fought incredibly well, a tiny feather-fisted pressure machine, and versus most other featherweights probably would have bagged several rounds (in my opinion, and that of the judges & commentators, there weren't more than perhaps two in this for him, with his greatest offensive moments coming with extended rallies in the 6th & 7th) - but the Mexico City man fought on a higher plane, great with a capital G. Tapia probably knew heading into the final third or so that he was likely behind on points and that a KO, given his own lack of pop at feather and Barrera's titanium jaw, was exceedingly unlikely - but he gave his amigo the gift of a willing canvas on which to paint his masterpiece. Tapia fought like hell just for the fun of it, because that is how the deeply troubled individual got his kicks ...and in the process he allowed Barrera to put on a clinic.

Right until the final bell they went at it hammers & tongs, like a pair of roosters in a Mexican cockfighting palenque. Immediately before and after punching the proverbial clock to punch the daylights out of each other in the twelfth round, they warmly embraced and remained close by each other with supportive displays of amiable human contact throughout all of the press conferences and media interviews all night long. No hard feelings. Strictly business for one man...and for the other strictly pleasure, as being in the ring was the only rush that ever kept Johnny on the straight & narrow. (read his biography, if you haven't. It ranks among the ATG books on boxing...)

 

#4 Marco Antonio Barrera Tapia vs. Kennedy McKinney

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The birth of something...BAD!

This is, outside the Morales trilogy, arguably the most thrilling fight of MAB's career. It also was the inaugural episode of HBO's seminal Boxing After Dark program, which for two decades has supplemented its World Championship Boxing offerings by spotlighting talents on the fringes of stardom or still on the verge of their breakout world class performance, serving in much the same role as ShoBox on the network's main competitor.

This is the fifth defense of the belt Marco won against Cobrita Jiménez. The very same belt, for those keeping score at home, that he was going to retire immediately after having captured. :yep

McKinney represented as genuine a step up in class from anything Barrera had previously faced as Jiménez once did. Here was an Olympic gold medalist, eight year's Barrera's elder but debuting just a few months earlier and with nine fewer pro bouts' worth of wear & tear when they met. Kennedy may have been trending into decline, gradually, but he wasn't ready to have a fork stuck in him just yet...in fact, in yet another triangle-theory debunking moment, he would later thoroughly own Junior "Poison" Jones, the man that ended Barrera's reign in defense #9 and then beat him again in a rematch.

Interestingly, this was hailed by Jim Lampley as being a classic boxer vs. puncher matchup...as Marco was still years away from his transformation. Having said that, while he was more of a straightforward puncher in those days he was never just some crude Neanderthal...and people who saw him in that light were doomed to disappointment. Case in point, Kenny Adams was predicting - and hoping for - this generation's Hearns vs. Cuevas, but McKinney wasn't quite Hearns and the Baby Faced Assassin was far beyond Pipino level.

Barrera - who, remember, wanted to retire after "reaching the mountaintop" against Cobrita - was at this juncture still harboring illusions about earning his law degree and passing the bar exam by the century's turn, viewing boxing as just an itch he needed to scratch first...with most fans and observers (and probably even Marco himself and trainer Rudy Perez) anticipating his career having a short-burning fuse...a shooting-star who given his all-out-war style could at best hope to last a decade from his debut in the ring before no longer being able to compete.

On the undercard were older brother Jorge and friend Johnny Tapia. Both scored non-televised knockouts (a year before they would eventually square off, with Johnny making quick work of Jorge), no doubt bolstering the mood for Marco heading into the biggest fight of his life. McKinney was alone in hostile territory - Inglewood being a predominantly African-American city but with this mostly Latino partisan crowd he was swimming upstream and his attempt to curry favor by wearing a Lakers jersey with Magic Johnson's name & number did nothing to endear him any further with the bemused MAB faithful.

MAB came out gangbusters, laying down the law early with hard right hands. McKinney would show his championship poise and chops, however, rebounding to clearly win four on the spin (on my card, anyway...three in a row on Harold Lederman's). From the hellish ROTY sixth onward, however, momentum belonged squarely in the Mexican corner...even in the penultimate round, when Barrera suffered his first professional knockdown! he would argue - compellingly - that it was a slip (the canvas was indeed wet, and he would slip again moments later) but the fact does remain that McKinney blasted him with a perfect right hand down the pipe just before he brushed his glove on the canvas...with a clear enough causal relationship (even if the moisture of the mat also was a factor) that Pat Russell felt, correctly, obliged to credit the American with a flash KD.

Round eight saw RJJ proven hilariously wrong twice in a row ("this isn't MAB's fight, this is McKinney's" - blam-o. "He'll never survive this, he can't!" - gets up from another knockdown, sees the ninth round, and tenth, and eleventh (dropping Barrera), twelfth..

This was the ninth of Marco's ten-fight stand at the Great Western Forum of Inglewood, CA starting with Miguel Espinoza in June of 1994 and ending with Jesse Magana in 1996. He was such a popular draw here for this couple of years & managed that he was actually promoted BY the venue itself for the bulk of this period.

Merchant and Lampley had been riffing on this being like Meldrick Taylor vs. J.C. Chávez, remarking that it was "the best of American style versus the best of Mexican". Well, that would end up ringing half-true, as McKinney was, like Taylor, stopped with just a minute left in round 12. Circumstances differed in that McKinney wasn't ahead on the cards, nor was there any controversy surrounding the stoppage (now, the couple of minutes preceding it? Horribly officiated. A slip ruled a knockdown and then a knockdown ruled a slip...) but the bottom line is that it did at least faintly echo the drama of that earlier USA vs. Mexico superfight; McKinney wanted very badly to at least reach the final bell on his feet and missed out by just 55 seconds. Brutal.

At least McKinney would have the opportunity to rewrite the final chapter of his career, with his impressive bounceback against Jones the next year. As for Barrera, the sky was the limit - and while the show he launched would outlast his active time in the ring the legacy h would spend the next decade carving out is sure to live on forever.

 

#3 Marco Antonio Barrera Tapia vs. Naseem Hamed

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This is the one for which he will always be remembered. While the Morales trilogy cemented his place in the Hall of Fame (were it not already secure by then... which it was, IMO but perhaps I am in the minority there) it was this night that immortalized - nay, deified - MAB in the hearts of millions.

For those keeping score at home, Barrera had now faced a handful of southpaws - 5 in 56 bouts, less than 9% of his total opponents (namely José Luis Valbuena, Jesse Magana, Agapito Sánchez, Frankie Toledo, and Eddie Cook) - and none of them could even begin to prepare someone for a Naseem Hamed, more unorthodox in his style than any of them save Agapito, yet far more effective. No matter ...this was going to be his moment, he knew it; the Baby Faced Assassin was ready.

He was ready because people had said it was impossible. He was ready because nobody gave Barrera, then only 27 but almost universally considered to be past his sell-by date, incapable of moving up another weight class and surviving against the Ring Mag's number one featherweight in the world, an insanely talented clown prince flirting with ascending to p4p supremacy (a coronation that probably would have taken place with a win over MAB). Putting his giant brass huevos into this one basket, Marco threw himself into his most intense and laser-focused training camp since his debut twelve years prior. He wanted to make an example of Hamed, and prove that slow & steady could indeed win the race...if you have a durable and heavy-handed enough tortoise bringing discipline & skill to counter the naturally gifted swagger of an over-confident hare...

Prince Naz had been conquering the broad landscape from 112 up through 126lbs, a brash and primping Napoleon...until he ran into MAB, his own personal Waterloo. This was a time when Hamed was among the biggest draws in the sport - maybe the biggest non-heavyweight draw internationally since the "Four Kings" era of the 1980's. There was a sizable contingent of boxing observers who now began to opine that it was Naz, and not RJJ, who could boast that he was the most talented fighter of the generation. Consider that a moment: he was in the conversation with Roy Jones, who more than a few historians consider the most naturally talented boxer of all time.

Barrera set a belligerent tone early, firing off salvos of warning shots in cascading waves and landing a thunderclap mission statement of right hand in the introductory minute.

Patricia Morse-Jarman and Chuck Giampa both gave Hamed round three, as did Harold Lederman (who actually gave him the second as well, meaning the Prince led on the HBO scoring guru's unofficial scorecard heading into the 4th) - and indeed, Comp-U-Box supports that Naz did land a few more, although Barrera's quality of connections was enough for Duane Ford to dissent and edge it his way.

Something happened in the fourth - doubt began to creep into Naseem's eyes, and by the closing bell he was left standing pat in the middle of the ring, petrified a moment, gawping in shock at Barrera turning on a heel & sauntering to his stool. You could see it on trainer Emanuel Steward's face, as well. They were facing a man that Hamed couldn't hurt, couldn't bully, couldn't razzle-dazzle with his usual antics. Furthermore, this was a man that could land damaging shots on Hamed, forcing him to rethink his customary arms-down showboating and defensive inattentiveness.

A new thought was occurring to Hamed, something that had never crossed his mind even while rising off the canvas in his pier-6 brawl with Kelley at Madison Square Garden - "I can lose. I might lose. I am capable of actually ...losing...:yikes"

He sort of sleep-walked through rounds five through nine, lost most of them on Harold Lederman's card and those of the judges' panel - throwing pot shot right jabs and mostly keeping the left sheathed, doing his best to use slippery upper-body movement to make Barrera miss, but not succeeding often enough as Barrera kept up stifling yet intelligent pressure, boxing perfectly to flawlessly execute Rudy Pérez's laudable game plan. Just as the ninth drew to a close, Hamed actually had the look of possibly being taken out...and of course stuck his neck out to make a show of reacting with cocky defiance. The cat was outta the bag, however - the illusion was shattering. It was possible to walk Prince Naz down, and to put him on the backfoot. Nobody had done this before, nobody had even dreamed it.

This is on the shortlist of candidates for "world championship twelve-round schooling of the decade", along with

1. Joseph William Calzaghe vs. Jeffrey Scott Lacy on 3/4/2006
   
2. Cristian Ricardo Lucio Mijares vs. Jorge Armando Arce Armenta on 4/14/2007
   
3. Bernard Humphrey Hopkins Jr. vs. Kelly Robert Pavlik on 10/1/2008

...and IMO just might be, of the four, the most stark example of a fighter taking another's soul and establishing his superiority in humiliating fashion - even though Hamed probably won more rounds (or was at least competitive in more rounds) than did Lacy, Pavlik or Arce.

By the start of round 12, nobody believed Hamed was in the contest anymore - not the Prince himself, nor his trophy wife Eleasha, nor a dejected and embarrassed Manny Steward. MAB had to have known that he now had a cushion of at least a point (maybe a couple of points) to spare, and so what does the madman do? He grabs Hamed by his smirking kisser and SLAMS it onto the padding of the corner turnbuckle. He's damn lucky this didn't instantly result in a disqualification loss, but the gambit paid off - his cushion was indeed wide enough to withstand the shaving of a single integer. With that aggressive, mean-spirited, flagrantly intentional and disrespectful foul - Barrera earned himself weeks of exposure on SportsCenter (and years more on boxing highlight compilations once YouTube rose to prominence) and put an exclamation point on the most satisfying beat-down of a major heel the sport had seen in a lifetime.

A lot of excuses have been made for Naz in the years since (...he was under-trained! ...he was over-trained! ...he was adrift in the wake of his split with longtime trainer Brendan Ingle! ...he was nursing a hand injury! ...he was living an extravagant lifestyle at the height of his celebrity and partying too much! :bby :blabla), but the damage to his reputation - and more importantly, his ego - was devastating & irreversible. He fought just once more, against fringe contender Manuel Calvo Villahoz, a Spaniard coming off a MD victory in a rematch with aging Welsh former WBO featherweight champion Steve Robinson - the very man Hamed knocked out in 1995 to begin his championship reign - for the European title (for which Robinson had in turn beaten him in '99). Hamed labored to a very ugly wide unanimous decision over Calvo, looking horrid, and was quite literally booed into retirement. The fans were no longer buying what he was selling. Marco had drawn the curtain to reveal the great & powerful wizard had been a smoke-show, with a scared, over-the-hill man frantically operating the levers.

 

#2 Marco Antonio Barrera Tapia vs. Érik Isaac Morales Elvira III

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Cinched!

Barrera needed to win the Morales tie-breaker in order to assure his place in the Mexican boxing pantheon. That both of them were going down in the history books as legends in their country - and into Canastota on their first eligible respective ballots - was already unquestionable. The only matter left to sort out was the order in which they would be viewed in posterity - even if both were great, one had to be greater, and their head-to-head rubber match was the crucible that held lone sovereignty over this determination.

They had fought twice already, with popular opinion seeing them as having stolen decisions from each other. Could they reach a clear-cut result, "Once and For All", to provide their rivalry with some closure?

They could, and they did.

It has been the oft-repeated narrative of this rivalry for the better part of two decades now that Morales got a gift, then Barrera got one in the rematch, and that Barrera received the first non-controversial decision in the rubber match...although most agree that even this finale was razor-thin, despite MAB having banked enough points early to coast in the second half.

I see things a little differently. Yes, the first verdict IMO ought to have gone to MAB as the mob concurs - but I don't think he was awarded the rematch unfairly. He also beat Morales in the rubber match by a wider margin (and overall proved his superiority across the series) than has become the writ of legend.

Here is my scoring for all 36 rounds of the Morales vs. Barrera trilogy:
(the on-the-night scorecards of Harold Lederman, and the aggregated fan scorecards from EyeOnTheRing are provided for side-by-side comparison)

1. 10-9 MAB (EOTR: 10-9 MAB; Lederman: 10-9 MAB)
   
2. 10-9 MAB, dominant (EOTR: 10-9 MAB; Lederman: 10-9 MAB)
   
3. 10-9 EM (EOTR: 10-9 EM; Lederman: 10-9 EM)
   
4. 10-9 EM, super close (EOTR: 10-9 EM; Lederman: 10-9 EM)
   
5. 10-9 EM (EOTR: 10-9 EM; Lederman: 10-9 MAB)
   
6. 10-9 EM (EOTR: 10-9 EM; Lederman: 10-9 EM)
   
7. 10-9 EM, close (EOTR: 10-9 EM; Lederman: 10-9 EM)
   
8. 10-9 MAB, dominant (EOTR: 10-9 MAB; Lederman: 10-9 MAB)
   
9. 10-9 MAB (EOTR: 10-9 MAB; Lederman: 10-9 MAB)
   
10. 10-9 MAB, close & ugly (EOTR: 10-9 EM; Lederman: 10-9 MAB)
    
11. 10-9 MAB (EOTR: 10-9 MAB; Lederman: 10-9 MAB)
    
12. 10-8 MAB (EOTR: 10-8 MAB; Lederman: 10-8 MAB)
    
13. 10-9 EM (EOTR: 10-9 EM; Lederman: 10-9 EM)
    
14. 10-9 MAB (EOTR: 10-9 MAB; Lederman: 10-9 MAB)
    
15. 10-9 EM (EOTR: 10-9 EM; Lederman: 10-9 EM)
16. 10-9 EM (EOTR: 10-9 EM; Lederman: 10-9 EM)
17. 10-9 EM (EOTR: 10-9 EM; Lederman: 10-9 EM)
    
18. 10-9 MAB (EOTR: 10-9 MAB; Lederman: 10-9 MAB)
19. 10-9 MAB (EOTR: 10-9 EM; Lederman: 10-9 EM)
20. 10-9 MAB, close (EOTR: 10-9 EM; Lederman: 10-9 MAB)
21. 10-9 MAB, clear (EOTR: 10-9 MAB; Lederman: 10-9 MAB)
22. 10-9 EM, clear (EOTR: 10-9 EM; Lederman: 10-9 EM)
    
23. 10-9 MAB, close (EOTR: 10-9 EM; Lederman: 10-9 EM)
24. 10-9 MAB, clear (EOTR: 10-9 MAB; Lederman: 10-9 MAB)
25. 10-9 MAB (EOTR: 10-9 MAB; Lederman: 10-9 MAB)
    
26. 10-9 MAB, close but clear, despite Morales' late flourish - Comp-U-Box had Morales landing more but I thought MAB's stuff was most damaging, and he broke El Terrible's nose (EOTR: 10-9 EM; Lederman: 10-9 EM)
27. 10-9 MAB (EOTR: 10-9 MAB; Lederman: 10-9 MAB)
28. 10-9 MAB (EOTR: 10-9 MAB; Lederman: 10-9 MAB)
29. 10-9 MAB (EOTR: 10-9 MAB; Lederman: 10-9 MAB)
30. 10-9 MAB (EOTR: 10-9 MAB; Lederman: 10-9 MAB)
31. 10-9 EM, clear (EOTR: 10-9 EM; Lederman: 10-9 EM)
32. 10-9 EM, clear (EOTR: 10-9 EM; Lederman: 10-9 EM)
33. 10-9 MAB, clear but very lucky Kenny Bayless didn't penalize him for the blatant rabbit punch (EOTR: 10-9 MAB; Lederman: 10-9 MAB)
34. 10-9 MAB (EOTR: 10-9 MAB; Lederman: 10-9 MAB)
35. 10-9 MAB, close (EOTR: 10-9 EM; Lederman: 10-9 EM)
36. 10-9 EM clear, damn near 10-8 actually (EOTR: 10-9 EM; Lederman: 10-9 EM)

In totality:

1. I: 115-112 MAB, EOTR 114-113 MAB, Lederman 116-111 MAB
2. II: 115-113 MAB, EOTR 116-112 EM, Lederman 115-113 EM
3. III: 117-111 MAB, EOTR 115-113 MAB, Lederman 115-113 MAB

Overall, by my tabulation, Barrera edges Morales 23-13 in rounds or 347-336 in cumulative points. Now cue the outrage, death threats, and curses upon my name hurled down from the peanut gallery.

Regardless, even among those who felt it was close in terms of the distribution of rounds won, the consensus opinion is that Barrera won his rounds big (especially in the first half), and that it was thereby of the whole trilogy probably the most straightforward in terms of picking a clear victor.

There are to date four rivalries in the modern era that have merited inclusion, by all the experts in acclamation, on GOAT lists:

Corrales vs. Castillo
Izzy vs. Rafa
Gatti vs. Ward
MAB vs. EM

...with the latter two being in the running for "greatest trilogy ever" (with Izzy vs. Rafa disqualified by virtue of being a trilogy-plus...which it shouldn't have ever turned into, but that is an epic rant for another thread...meanwhile Chico passed away before he and Temible could - by then both shot to bits - simultaneously cash in and settle their account with a rubber match) but with all due respect to Micky and the late Arturo, they don't come even close to matching the skill level or seething intensity of Érik & Marco's rivalry...not least of which because they weren't actually enemies but fans of each other who turned into great friends (with Gatti actually hiring Ward as his trainer near his career's end).

Gatti vs. Ward might have a claim to being the more crowd-pleasing HBO trilogy overall (and even that would be only by a hair) but certainly MAB-EM was fought on a plane that soared above - in terms of both meaningfulness, and the quality of combat. The latter is paralleled in (televised - but probably sans that qualifier as well, in the absence of any compelling evidence of a GOAT trilogy in the 19th century) boxing history only by Ali vs. Frazier and maybe Zale vs. Graziano across the full spectrum of criteria: excitement, significance, personal enmity, mutually displayed skill & talent, and ebb & flow in momentum.

Of course, I do hold the minority view in believing that MAB went 3-0 (if just by the skin of his teeth) against his chief rival - but I also can objectively acknowledge that Morales was a legitimate ATG in his own right, probably nestled up just behind Marco and nipping on his enemy's heels by dint of having fared better overall against their common opposition. Barrera netted the more impressive result against Paulie Ayala, but it was a more faded version. In an exact tit-for-tat mirroring of this dynamic, Morales knocked out Jones two years after Barrera lost to him for the second time...so we can more or less call Paulie & Junior a wash, canceling one another out to be equitably charitable to both Mexican greats...leaving us with a third - and most important - common opponent for a tiebreaker. While both suffered one-sided losses to him, Morales has the distinction of also having at least once clearly beaten Manny Pacquiao. Érik, coming off this very loss in the Barrera rubber match (speaking of tiebreakers), actually surprised everyone and beat the Filipino budding phenom very clearly - did not dominate per se, but did beat him very clearly - the first time...and his subsequent losses could be written off by Terrible apologists as coming when he was already well on his way to shot. As for Barrera, he lost all but maybe a round or two against Pac-Man, including the one in which he scored a knockdown).

Some might argue that I have a pro-Marco bias (this very thread is hardly an exculpating piece of evidence in my defense) but I'm not really that far off from the widespread views on any installment. There were just a few close rounds that most gave Morales, that I saw the other way - primarily in the 1st and 3rd matches. Each time he fought incredibly well - he was, of course a supreme counter-puncher, and nearly Barrera's equal in greatness - but ultimately he came up short in every attempt to prove himself the premier Mexican and worthy successor to JCC that both wanted desperately to be recognized as.

I think Barrera places higher than Morales on most ATG lists (if only just), and rightfully so. He sealed that deal - while past his prime, in what retrospectively would be considered his "down but not out" phase between Pac I & II - on this day at MGM Grand, an historic co-promotion between Top Rank and the fledgling Golden Boy Promotions (in which Barrera was a founding partner alongside ODLH and Bernard Hopkins) the weekend after Thanksgiving in 2004...coming up on a decade ago now! I, for one, found myself exceedingly grateful to receive the bounty of this dynamic legend refusing to subside without raging against the dying of the proverbial light...

 

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#1 Marco Antonio Barrera Tapia vs. Érik Isaac Morales Elvira II

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Question asked and answered. "Is he really that good, though?"

Yes.

This is the single fight in their rivalry that, per what has become the Liberty Valancesque overarching narrative, Morales is supposed to have been deprived of a rightful victory. I happen to feel he lost it...and that Barrera deserves more credit for it than for his other, "clearer" official victory at super feather. Now, if MAB had received the initial verdict in the series, then indeed MAB vs. EM I, down at super bantam, naturally would top my list of Barrera's greatest wins. As it happens, the record books have it down in his L column, so as little as we may like it, we need to abide by that and not call it something we might like it to be. As long as that negative result stands, I have to leave it off my list.

Now, to address my earlier point, about the order in which I rank MAB vs. EM II & III...many are probably going to scratch their heads at putting the controversial featherweight contest down as Barrera's greatest achievement, when he seemed to have so much easier a time and up at 130lbs and, in start contrast with this one, deserve it by acclamation. I'm not much concerned with the pressures of group-think, however. In this one, as down at super bantam, Marco defeated a fierier and "more prime" Érik ...and was coming in with Morales having the psychological edge of being up 1-0 already ...not to mention, in the rubber match, Barrera (the more cerebral and ultimately adaptable of the pair) had reaped the benefit of 24 rounds' worth of direct head-to-head scouting, which in part is why he seemed to have Érik's number by 2004.

Much of the bellyaching surrounding the scoring of the featherweight contest in 2002 stems from the perception that Jay Nady robbed Morales of a body shot knockdown ruling in the seventh. He didn't. Nady was in a position to see what the initial angle picked up by the camera HBO's technical director happened to have switched to couldn't show: that Morales had accidentally stomped upon Barrera's lead foot with his own just prior to firing the right hand on the body. On the HBO telecast, which cut off below each man's waist, it did create the naked-eye appearance of Morales scoring a legitimate body shot knockdown, with Barrera reaching out to grab the ropes, floundering, and ultimately having to anchor himself with a glove splayed and palm on the canvas. They showed a slow-motion replay between the seventh & eighth, this one from more of a bird's eye view - and from this vantage one can plainly make out Morales stepping on Barrera's toes. Even though it was "slight" contact, as pointed out by perpetual noisome grump Larry Merchant in attempting to diminish the causality and bemoan Nady's ruling, it more than substantiated the call the official made. Would the body shot have caused the knockdown without that contact between their feet? We don't and can't ever know, but Mr. Nady was correct to err on the side of not ruling it a clean drop, IMO.

That he got it right was a momentous stroke of good fortune: Duane Ford and Mike Glienna both had the same final score I did. If they both, like me, scored the seventh for MAB, then a three-point swing there (if Nady had ruled Barrera knocked down by Morales, transforming a 10-9 for him into a 10-8 against) would alter the outcome altogether, making their final tallies and mine 114-113 Morales and giving him a majority decision.

My personal theory is that a lot of the revisionism surrounding this fight is steeped in that no-call's emotional resonance. It underscored a performance in which Barrera was perceived - correctly - as having "fought Morales' fight" (thing is, he did just that but not to his detriment, necessarily; he actually beat El Terrible at his own game on the outside at times). It swung the sympathies of Harold Lederman and many fans (including those whose cards were aggregated by EOTR) in Morales' favor, even though if you redact that "knockdown" sequence and basically strike it from the record, instructing your internal jury to disregard it evidentially, and focus instead on the other two minutes and fifty seconds...there's really no compelling argument for Morales winning the seventh. For the fans to score a "makeup" round for somebody they may feel (incorrectly) was robbed of a knockdown is one thing...but I expect more professionalism from Lederman. :verysad Homer nods, however.

That seventh round is really a microcosm of the fight itself - and, indeed the rivalry on the whole. Close and competitive, with the old warrior tapping into his deep cognitive reserves to find a way to rise above the younger, fresher, bigger, rangier man who in nearly any other era would have been the preeminent Great of his weight ambit. There was, in the seventh as in the fight as in the rivalry on increasingly macro tiers - a general impression of Morales having done better than he did. Mind you, in all three he did very well - but the idea that maybe he deserved to be the victory of 7th/fight/rivalry was illusory. He didn't score a legitimate unambiguous knockdown; he didn't out-jab Barrera in the rematch (at least not consistently, and not enough to make it "the story of the night"), and he didn't come even close across 36 rounds to distinguishing himself beyond having taken a respectable but still patent minority of them.

And there we have it. There were plenty of fairly decent wins on Barrera's résumé that didn't make the cut here: Jesse Benavides, Carlos Gabriel Salazar, Jesus Alberto "Chuyín" Sarabia, Maui Díaz, Eddie Croft, Orlando Fernández, Pastor Humberto Maurín, Richie Wenton, Pedro Javier "El Alacrán" Torres, Luiz Freitas (older brother of Acelino "Popó" Freitas), Paul Lloyd ... really thirty names on his ledger are meritorious...and while that is less than half and leaves plenty of "filler", show me somebody else with 75 professional bouts of which more than half - or hell, even three-quarters - isn't just Tom, Dick & Harry padding.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! I'm thankful I got to watch the bulk of this career unfold.