Chronicles of The Master Class Mexican Hombres - Part 2, Click Here For Part 1.

By Bradley Yeh

Photo © Chris Cozzone/FightWireImages.com

For a while the sheer scale and extent of Marco Antonio Barerra’s achievements escaped imagination and stunned our senses. It was as if he were fighting free from the silent fears and assertions that normally regulated achievement of the highest dreams within athlete’s minds. When Barerra effortlessly manhandled Hamed, the realization that boxing could also be as refreshing to watch, as Barerra appeared to find it liberating, hit home for us all and within the Mexico’s fighting heartland there was a homecoming for the traditional Mexican hombre.

Indeed, effervescence was an unusual quality for a fighter to behold.

Although Mexican they both may be, Hamed quickly learned with Barerra that he was no-ones Augie Sanchez.

Barerra aggressively honed in on Price Naseem Hamed’s legend with such ease when they met, that his performance not only dismantled the UK super hero, it made mockery of Hamed’s alchemic marvel in a similar fashion that Hamed himself had become known to do against high ranked opponents.

The mockery was in the simplistic, but significant, adjustments adopted by Barerra to thwart Hamed.

Barerra removed his left jab lead that Hamed’s show appeared critically dependant upon. In doing so there was nothing left for Hamed to time and miss, or gloat over. All that remained was Barerra’s visible baby faced contempt for Hamed. For Hamed it was a role reversal he had not yet contemplated, and one he could not adjust to.

For all the technical superiority Hamed possessed, with Barerra that night his game appeared only as strong as its weakest link.

Albeit devoid of any seriously brutal and graphic scenes, the win over Hamed was much more than just another sheep savaged by a wolf at the door with a fondness for cracking skulls.

Barrera’s elimination of Hamed from the championship boxing landscape was perceived by fans as divine intervention, a symbolic event that carried with it special remedial qualities to refresh and cure all those persistent pesky annoyances otherwise requiring heavy medication.

Against the self-proclaimed boxing punk, “Prince Naseem Hamed”, Barerra gave both the American and Mexican boxing communities an experience that was, by the smallest margins, a pinch short of religious. It appeared as if Barerra’s boxing sensibility had triumphed over Hamed’s punk fighting arrogance.

In defeat with Jones, Barerra was a great champion. With Hamed, Barerra became boxing gold overnight.

In reflection, the full scale of Barerra’s tenacious reincarnation after his Junior Jones losses was clearly evident. The road trodden by Bararra from Junior Jones to the Hamed victory now served as a case in point of one of the most powerfully built and elegantly engineered examples of one Mexican fighter’s single-minded self-belief.

Or, perhaps that’s just what an authentic Mexican hombre does because there is no other way.

They say you learn more in defeat than triumph, but for those with focussed on the full comprehension of Barerra’s depth of character and pedigree; it’s useful to remember that Chavez Sr., whilst undeniably prodigious in his boxing achievements and reputation, displayed no such abundance of similar qualities after losses. 

Even after Pacquiao blew Barerra out of the Texas ring in 2003, almost two and a half years after Barerra fought Hamed, still then Barerra showed us how to extract honour from defeat and rebound back. He and team members Perez and Maldonado offered no excuses and Barerra immediately fought on with Paulie Ayala, and then rematched the ever dangerous Erik Morales.

There was no self-serving pity from the Paquiao loss. Barerra simply got on with his career of winning and entertaining us.

In fact it was more than that.

Because losses sometimes distract from the marketability and brand loyalty coveted by all fighters, the Morales rematch contained the hidden significance about the fighter that Barerra is. Not since the Ali, Foreman & Frazier years had there been a time where great fighters, (only several fights after being comprehensively beaten), willingly accepted to further risk their reputation after such a significant loss by fighting another terminally dangerous opponent.

It takes more than a loss to dent a true hombre’s confidence, and with Paulie Ayala dismissed, the very next cab off the rank after the Pacquiao disaster was a rematch with Erik Morales, a Mexican hombre capable of matching Barerra’s stamina laden fighting rhythm for each and every round. Morales had previously beaten Barerra when they first met, and in controversially doing so he gave such a scorching account of himself that the baby faced assassin found himself combating in a minor tail spin as he searched his soul for the way to win in the virginal territory of being without any distinct fighting advantage.

With Erik Morales, Barerra found another Mexican hombre that was willing to fight all of the three minutes contained within every round.

The suggestion of a rematch with the equivalent of Morales at a similar juncture of almost any other fighter’s career, particularly after a loss like that which Pacquiao administered, would have had most managers eyes splashed with bright yellow, “proceed with caution” danger signs.

However, Barerra’s risk taking personality would have it no other way.

Is it any wonder that the fans are partial to Barerra?

Barerra won the rematch with Morales in 2004, and at that stage of his career we all thought, just where was the boundary for Marco?

Juan Manuel Marquez is a different beast altogether than Barerra.

Whilst Barerra had rampaged above ground as an apparition of the devil incarnate to those opposing him, Marquez was the Minotaur beneath the earth, a monster only unleashed from its underground labyrinth when unsuspecting sacrifices were to be publicly devoured.

Whilst possessing tenacity in equal amounts to Barerra, Marquez brought serious horsepower into the ring. As well as this, he had also successfully resisted defeat from Barerra’s master destroyer and nemesis, Manny Paqcuiao, and alone on its own merits his performance against Paqcuiao allowed Marquez to proclaim he was also a Mexican hombre. In a world that seeks to measure the absolute meaning and magnitude of every performance, how amazing it is that even with quantifiable achievements like this, Marquez’s powerful punching prospects with big time broadcasters somehow escaped him and he remained frustratingly trapped underground where he could do no harm.

More than once Marquez and his trainer Ignacio Beristain must have experienced the frustration and disappointment of moving ever so slowly toward the light of the big stage, but always in the shadow of other great Mexican fighting celebrities.

Even for those highly motivated, a life in dark spaces and shadows is at best sullenly euphoric in its offerings, boxers locked into these scenarios often feel that they're forever fighting on the edge of reality.

What's even worse was when Marquez finally rose and raged against the Pac-machine, against all the odds; his efforts were sometimes reportedly diluted down, as if his feats were some kind of mystery achievement. And while Marquez was forced to wait for his next big chance to shine in the shadows Manny Pacquiao skyrocketed up into boxing’s stratosphere.

Marquez’s persuasive performance with Pacquiao caught several scribes by surprise, and as a result it showed in their publicized misunderstandings. Juan Manuel Marquez boxes both clever and cunning and many reporters simply weren’t bothered to check the inside story underground before their commitment to paper was made. Even before the result was available to print, it seemed that many believed Pacquiao’s win over Marquez was a mere formality.

But Pacquiao didn’t win.

And as a result the coercive energy required to accurately rewrite and reverse the pre-fight polarisation and all the bias proved too much. It got in the way of a good story that was already spinning on the press collecting ink.

The incredible result for Marquez was that he lost his marquee value before it was ever in his possession to behold whilst he performed better than Barerra with the same opponent.

For the larger part of Marquez’ recent professional fighting career this has been the un-chosen modus operandi.

By comparison to Marquez, Barerra has enjoyed mostly a charmed career as a seasoned professional. If not for the money associated with prize fighting, in his prime most competitors would have probably avoided him. Indeed, a brief history of Barerra undoubtedly shows that when required, he has regularly delivered big time results when called upon.

Marquez’s trainer Beristain knew against Barerra any performance similar to Marquez’s 2004, Pacquiao outing would have allowed Marquez to finally demonstrate to the correct audience that he can stand against the class of truly elite boxing warlords - maybe even overthrow the featherweight regime to become a supreme Mexican icon in his own pugilistic right.

Like all intelligent thinking fighters Marquez and Beristain also knew a dynamic offence came from a good defence. That well known axiom had proven to also be an Achilles heel for Marquez, as unfortunately the synonymous world of prize fighting and cable empires are reticent to warmly welcome safety-first techniques with open arms. It is for these, sometimes, crazy reasons that Marquez’s well rounded possession of fighting intelligence unfairly ensured opportunities escaped him.

Marquez became a misunderstood and underrated fighter. A fighter worthy of so much more.

That was until he defeated Barerra.

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