Juan Manuel “Juanma” Marquez is a very strong featherweight. In the ring, the Puerto Rican has the power of two men. How do we know this? Because he managed to wobble two guys, Saturday, with the force of his left hook.
Trouble was, one of those guys was Lopez himself. The other, of course, was Mexican Rafael Marquez who challenged Lopez for the WBO featherweight title at MGM Grand in the main event of a standard-setting episode of Showtime’s “Championship Boxing.” Lopez prevailed by technical knockout when Marquez was unable to continue.
As the bell rang to begin the ninth round, Marquez waited long enough for Lopez to drop to his knees at center ring in celebration, and then Marquez rose from his stool and walked across the canvas touching his right shoulder with his left glove. Afterwards, Marquez would say his shoulder was too weak to raise his right hand. Should we believe him?
Damn right we should.
Forget Marquez’s pedigree. Forget his participation in one of the greatest trilogies in boxing history with Israel Vazquez. Consider, instead, where Marquez’s prized weapon was all night. The right cross, a punch Marquez used in a reign of terror over the bantamweight division for six years, was nowhere to be found in his fight with Lopez.
At the end of the second round, in fact, I asked my notebook a rhetorical question about it: “For some reason, Marquez doesn’t see any available right hands against a southpaw?”
Then the third round happened. Lopez, a larger man than Marquez, threw a short left cross from his southpaw stance that caught Marquez on the forehead. Marquez was off-balance when the punch landed and much more so after. He stumbled backwards across the ring, found his balance, planted and threw a right cross at Lopez’s onrushing jaw.
No he didn’t. Actually, Marquez found his balance, planted, cocked his right hand in front of his shoulder and pushed the weight of his body behind it. A first occasion of what became a regular occurrence in the fight: Marquez using Lopez’s own force to supply power. Lopez obliged, running into Marquez’s pushed right glove and halting a bit. The next round was more interesting still.
Rafael Marquez, much like his older brother Juan Manuel, struggles a bit against men who fight taller than he does. Accomplished as Los Hermanos Marquez are – probably prizefighting’s best brother tandem of all time – neither ducks punches well as he does everything else. Both put their chins in predictable places.
Marquez, then, would repeatedly duck Lopez’s lead right hook and drop his head to the red and black Dodge insignia on the waistband of Lopez’s trunks. While he was down there, though, he had occasion to make a surprising discovery: Lopez’s right glove, too, was even with that Dodge insignia.
How long do you think it took a fighter of Marquez’s caliber to realize that if Lopez’s right glove was even with his waistband, Lopez’s head was completely unguarded?
Quickly Marquez began to drop his shoulders, duck Lopez’s right hand, shift his shoulders leftward and rise on the other side – making a backwards U. Once there, he countered Lopez with light left hooks – light because, remember, despite Marquez’s Mexico City upbringing, he is a Nacho Beristain fighter, not a Julio Cesar Chavez knockoff, and so the left hook is not his Sunday punch.
But Lopez had another tactical mishap to complement his low lead hand. Annoyed more than deterred by Marquez’s counter hooks, Lopez began to square his feet and fire a left hook of his own behind his missed right hook. Now, lead hand low, Lopez entered in to a left-hooking contest with one of the best Mexican prizefighters in a generation. He’s lucky he survived it.
In round four, Marquez waited for Lopez’s lead right hook, made his U and threw his left hook. Lopez supplied half the power of the punch by snapping himself leftward with a hook of his own. Marquez’s hook landed first, and Lopez wobbled, eyes wide. Then Marquez pushed a right cross that knocked him into the ropes, and a fight ensued.
That was the end of the drama, if not the suspense. Lopez returned to his corner after the round, got a hold of himself and effectively put the left hook away. He began to throw left crosses, as he should have been doing all the while. Then he closed space, walked the smaller man down and began to brutalize Marquez. Within six minutes, order was restored, and Lopez ground Marquez to dust.
Marquez would not have finished the fight even if he hadn’t canceled it himself. Lopez was too big and too good. The question was not why Marquez stopped things after the eighth round but why he entered the ring in the first place.
“It had hurt me before (in training), but I didn’t want to cancel the fight another time,” Marquez said about a match he had already postponed once because of a hand injury. “But in the fourth and the fifth rounds, I couldn’t throw punches.”
Marquez then said as soon as his shoulder was better, he would like a rematch. He’s entitled to it, but: Shoulder and hand injuries in a 35-year-old’s training camp are Life speaking in short, declarative sentences about age.
And here’s a short, interrogative sentence for Juanma Lopez: What if those Marquez left hooks had come from Yuriorkis Gamboa?
Gamboa is a natural featherweight slugger who loads up on left hooks. Marquez, meanwhile, was a natural bantamweight whose best weapon was not a left hook. And yet look what Marquez did.
Bob Arum, who promotes both Lopez and Gamboa, says we may get the answer to that interrogative sentence in June. Until Saturday, frankly, I’d have bet the house on Juanma against Gamboa. But after Saturday, I’m filled with doubt.
Bart Barry can be reached at bbarry@15rounds.com. Additionally, his book, “The Legend of Muhammad Ali,” co-written with Thomas Hauser, can be purchased here.
