Vazquez-Marquez IV not in the Cards

Maybe it's best that we are left with our memories of the incredible trilogy because a fourth fight between Israel Vazquez and Rafael Marquez is just not in the cards right now, if ever.

For the past couple of months, it looked like they would add another chapter to their historical series of fights, but now it looks unlikely.

They faced each other three consecutive times in junior featherweight championship fights between March 2007 and March 2008 with each fight more action-packed than the previous one.

Marquez stopped Vazquez in the seventh round of the first fight. Vazquez gained revenge with a sixth-round knockout in the rematch, which was the 2007 fight of the year. In the third installment, Vazquez won via split decision in a fight that came down to the last round and was named 2008 fight of the year.

It's not unreasonable to declare their trilogy the greatest in boxing history. The stakes were that high and the action that non-stop and that good.

Vazquez has not fought since the 2008 victory over Marquez because of eye injuries, but was cleared to fight in early May.

Marquez was off for 14 months before returning in May for a third-round knockout of Jose Francisco Mendoza in Mexico in a shake-off-the-rust fight.

But Thursday, both sides were faced with the cold, hard reality that a fourth fight posed too great a financial risk for an uncertain reward.

Golden Boy Promotions CEO Richard Schaefer, who co-promotes Vazquez, had been trying to work out a deal under which Vazquez and Marquez would meet in a nontitle featherweight fight Oct. 17 in Las Vegas at the MGM Grand, which he had already reserved.

The plan was to make it the headliner of a Golden Boy pay-per-view card because Showtime, which televised the trilogy, was not interested in doing a pay-per-view and unwilling to break the bank to put it on the network. And Showtime would be competing against itself if it televised the fight on Oct. 17, the date the network is televising the first two bouts of its much-anticipated super middleweight tournament.

HBO was also out of the picture because it has major pay-per-view events Sept. 19 (Floyd Mayweather Jr.-Juan Manuel Marquez) and Nov. 14 (Miguel Cotto-Manny Pacquiao), and it didn't want to flood the schedule, nor was it interested in getting involved at the end of a rivalry that is so closely identified with Showtime, its chief competitor.

As much as Schaefer tried to crunch the numbers and make sure that both fighters were well paid, it just didn't work. He was facing the problem of trying to get 10 pounds of dirt into a 5-pound bag.

Schaefer was hopeful on Wednesday, saying that he was "talking to the necessary parties to put this deal together. Both fighters want it and it's a matter of finding the right structure."

Frank Espinoza, Vazquez's manager, told me Wednesday that he and Vazquez wanted the fight, simply reiterating the stance they've had since the third fight ended. Schaefer had also been talking to Marquez's co-promoters Jaime Quintana and Gary Shaw. Everyone was interested in making the fight.

But after running the numbers yet again, Schaefer met Thursday with Espinoza and talked with the Marquez side and delivered the news: He couldn't make the deal work without taking a significant risk. There would be no fourth fight, at least not in the fall.

"The money is just not there," Schaefer told me Thursday. "Sandwiched between those other two big pay-per-view shows and in the middle of the World Series, when we could have the Dodgers and Angeles involved (and thereby taking a ton of media coverage away from the fight on the West Coast), it just didn't work. So I informed everyone that I'm not going to do it. It was just too big of a risk. I hope the fight will eventually happen."

Espinoza told me he understood where Schaefer was coming from, but he was still disappointed.

"I think there were a lot of factors and the risk was too high," he said. "It was a big gamble because we don't know what it would do on pay-per-view and Golden Boy would have to put up a lot of money. I don't know if it would have worked or if there would have been enough pay-per-view buys, especially because without Showtime or HBO, they would have to do their own production. It didn't make sense. We're disappointed. Now I'll just have to see what the next step is for Israel. I'm going to swallow hard on this a little bit. Oct. 17 isn't going to happen. Now I'm going to have to sit down and talk to Israel and we'll move on from there."

Where Vazquez and Marquez move on to, however, is anybody's guess.- dan rafael