Last Tuesday while the “Once and Four All” conference call happened, I sat beside Mexican Jorge “El Travieso” Arce. He was at Dave & Buster’s restaurant in San Antonio to promote a different fight, with Eric Morel on June 26 at Alamodome. Arce likes to opine. Saturday’s match is two Mexicans in a historic fourth fight. So I asked him who’ll win.
“¡Híjole!” he said. “It is going to be a fight!”
Right on, Jorge. Saturday at Staples Center in Los Angeles, Israel Vazquez and Rafael Marquez will make the fourth fight of a rare tetralogy, after their trilogy ended in 2008 with Vazquez leading 2-1. The fight will be broadcast by Showtime.
Not on pay-per-view, mind you. No need to belabor the point, but one of the greatest trilogies in the history of prizefighting happened with no extra charge to Showtime subscribers. The fourth fight happens the same way. That’s a commendable model if boxing ever had one.
Back to El Travieso, whose nickname translates to something like “Naughty One.” Soon as he heard mention of Vazquez-Marquez IV, he said “¡Híjole!” – a word with no apt translation in English. It’s what would happen if you appended the personal pronoun “him” to “boy.” It’s a Mexicanism that makes no more sense in Spanish than English. It’s also a wonderfully expressive term that works like “Wow!” and usually gets accompanied by the speaker shaking his hand as if he just burned it.
Point is, Saturday’s fight is one that finds even Arce – a showman who promotes his own bleeding – using interjections and raising his voice. That says quite a bit about the evenness, drama and suspense of this series.
This says even more. Rafael Marquez won the first fight after Vazquez was unable to continue at the end of round 7. Israel Vazquez won the second fight when the referee stopped it a minute into round 6. The third fight, as you know, went the distance – barely. That’s 24 complete rounds worthy of revisiting old scorecards over.
So I did. Here’s what I found.
In the first fight, I gave Vazquez rounds 3 and 6, with the third going 10-8. Second fight, I had Vazquez winning rounds 2, 3 and 5. Third fight, he got rounds 2, 3, 6, 8, 11 and 12 – with the 12th going 10-8.
First fight on my card, Marquez won rounds 1, 2, 4, 5 and 7. Second fight, I gave him rounds 1 and 4. Third fight, he got rounds 1, 4, 5, 7 and 9, with the fourth going 10-8.
That comes to 226-226. Fitting, no?
Whither “Once and Four All” then? There’s no telling. Jorge Arce shared the conventional wisdom that Vazquez is the more-damaged of the two fighters; that Marquez, despite losing twice, hurt Vazquez in more permanent ways. Maybe.
The old adage says boxers gain weight on their chins more than their fists, and as this match is being made at 126 – four pounds above the weight limit for the first three – it’s worth asking whom that favors. Marquez seems the obvious choice.
After all, he would have won the second fight had he had perhaps a round or two more to work on the cuts above Vazquez’s eyes. He would have won the third fight if he’d just stayed upright in the final 10 seconds. His increased ability to withstand Vazquez’s punches, with the addition of four pounds, seems to portend victory for Marquez.
But what if the only thing that kept Vazquez from finishing Marquez in the final round of their trilogy was the 15 or so extra seconds Marquez’s fantastic right hand bought him over the preceding 11 rounds? That is, what happens if Vazquez tastes Marquez’s right cross early on Saturday and finds more fat on it and less chile?
Marquez says he’s better for the fights that he’s had with Vazquez. “The only thing that is different with me this time is that I am more mature,” Marquez said last Tuesday. He didn’t say but verily believes he would have won the second fight had it continued. He believes he won the third. Marquez, too, hears the whispers that Vazquez is no longer the man he was, that his reserves are spent. But he says, “I have always said that Israel is a great fighter.”
Asked if it’s a negative or a positive to know an opponent well as he now knows Marquez, Vazquez answers, “I see it as a positive . . . I know where to attack him from.” Note that Vazquez emphasizes the offensive benefit: If each man attacks the other’s weak point, the stronger man wins. So goes his calculus.
Rafael Marquez is a special talent. He has won 79 percent of his fights by knockout. His long right cross is devastating as any punch of this era. He is one half of the best brother combination in boxing history. He is one half of the best boxing trilogy in at least 30 years.
Israel Vazquez is a special talent, too. But Vazquez also has a component of will few athletes before him have possessed. When Showtime replays Vazquez-Marquez III Friday night, watch him in the 12th round. Watch him explode off his stool after 33 minutes of combat and a knockdown – with two damaged eyes and a surgically rebuilt nose. Watch him throw right hand after right hand without regard for consequence. It is a performance that, within its proper context, is demonical as any boxing has seen.
That kind of man should not be doubted. All indications are that Vazquez expects this match to be every bit as long and brutal as its immediate predecessor. Marquez might not. His promoter says Vazquez won’t last five rounds.
I beg to differ. This time, I think Vazquez gets to Marquez a half-minute earlier. So I’ll take Vazquez: KO-12.
Bart Barry can be reached via Twitter.com/bartbarry
