LAS VEGAS – Juan Manuel Marquez might not be the man in this world you least wish to see in a dark alley. For at 135 pounds, he is slighter of frame than an average Homo sapiens. But if you’ve ever seen him pause in the frenzy of combat to study another man’s weakness, Marquez is the last man you’d ever want to see in a dark alley if you were hurt.
“Predatory” is the word that comes quickest to mind. It sure came to mind Saturday night. And chances are good, it came to mind every day of Juan Diaz’s last training camp, too.
That was the time of solitude, rigor and starvation Diaz put himself through before his rematch with Marquez at Mandalay Bay’s Events Center on Saturday before a goodish crowd of 8,383, a rematch Marquez won convincingly: 116-112, 118-110 and 117-111. “The Rematch” to determine the lineal lightweight world champion was not good as its predecessor, but that didn’t make it bad.
I, too, scored it 118-110 for Marquez. I gave Diaz rounds 2 and 3. Did he perhaps deserve the 11th or 12th? Sure. But by then, it was easy to be mesmerized by Marquez.
Here’s what was clearest: Diaz was not to allow the weight of his upper body to fall over his front knee. Naturally aggressive, if not heavy fisted, Diaz has long shown the habit every volume puncher must overcome; he lets too much of his upper body bend too far forward. Against some fighters, it does not matter so long as Diaz keeps whacking them. Against a fighter of Marquez’s caliber, though, it will always matter.
There was not an instant Saturday, in 36 minutes of those two men trying to hurt one another, that Marquez did not look for Diaz’s weight to tilt forward. Capable of throwing an uppercut with either hand from any position, Marquez wanted one more chance to catch Diaz with his head down and his arms wide and cocked – exactly as he had in 2009’s Fight of the Year.
Diaz did not take his weight too far forward too often all night. And so, Marquez took him directly out of the match.
The Diaz strategy went like this: I’m going to stay on my back foot, be careful this time, and hope that at 36 years-old Marquez is not prepared to go 12 rounds with a 26 year-old like me. It was a good plan for remaining upright. But there was no chance Diaz was going to outbox Marquez and no chance he was going to wear him down, either.
If anything, Marquez was the aggressor in “The Rematch,” and that made you sympathize with Diaz. When the man across from you is a better puncher with better balance and better combinations from which to choose, you’d be crazy to rush him and crazy to think you can win if you don’t.
Which brings us to Marquez’s studying regimen, perhaps his most frightful trait. After every exchange – that won’t end till he’s punched you one more time – Marquez bulges his eyes and examines you, looking for any hint of breakage. Woe is you if he finds it.
Sort of makes you long for an in-game camera like they have in team sports, doesn’t it? Would that we could connect sensors to Marquez’s eyes in a prizefight. The images from those cameras might reveal that Marquez looks in the exact right spot at every moment; those images would make a marvelous tutorial for aspiring prizefighters.
Then we’d just have to teach them how to throw an uppercut-cross-uppercut combination, switch the order of their hands, and throw the same combination again. See, there are things you don’t do in a championship prizefight if you want to remain conscious, and one of those is lead with an uppercut of any kind. Yet Marquez does it all the time.
He bets on his balance and your inexperience. He knows he’ll be in position even if that lead uppercut misses. And he knows no sparring partner has thrown uppercut-cross-uppercut at you in camp. There’s only one way to solve that sort of arsenal, and Floyd Mayweather showed it to us 15 months ago: Come to your fight 15 pounds bigger than Marquez, and keep your distance.
Diaz was no larger than Marquez and had no choice but to close distance, Saturday. And they don’t call him “Baby Bull” for nothing. In the championship rounds, when a decision victory was entirely out of reach, Diaz took chances. He engaged Marquez much as his well-being could abide.
How gorgeous was that final round? The Mexican template for bringing fans to their feet in the closing three minutes: You touch gloves, express mutual admiration, and then fight with utter contempt for the man across from you. Such spite is one more detail that marks the great ones. Look at the last 10 seconds. Marquez kept punching till the referee was collecting blows more than Diaz, and then he turned away from Diaz’s embrace. The blood was still too hot for hugging: Give me a few minutes, kid, and I’ll come visit; right now I still hate you too much for that.
Ah, contempt. It brings us to the opponent who consumes Juan Manuel Marquez’s legacy, the Filipino whale to Marquez’s Ahab, the man Marquez would likely fight to the death if those were the terms for a rubber match: Manny Pacquiao.
“I am ready right now for Pacquiao,” Marquez said in this post-fight press conference, as he said after his last fight with Diaz. “The priority is Pacquiao, more.”
That last word – more – made no more sense in Spanish than it does in English. It was an emphasis imprecise as it was meaningful.
If you were Pacquiao, though, would you give Marquez one more chance to find your weaknesses? Me neither.
Bart Barry can be reached at bbarry@15rounds.com
