By Shawn Krest

One of the highlights of the summer sports schedule is Major League Baseball’s Home Run Derby.  Held the night before the All Star Game, it is a three hour celebration of all-or-nothing power. 

Coaches in their sixties throw 80 mph fastballs right over the plate, then duck for cover behind a metal screen as balls whiz skyward.  Fans squeal, announcers shriek, and everyone watches.

It is spectacle but not sport.  Suits at the MLB offices boiled baseball down to its essence—Babe Ruth—and constructed an event guaranteed to make any strapping young slugger look like the Bambino. 

Boxing doesn’t have an All Star Break, but there is an event that rivals the exaggerated freak show that is the Home Run Derby:  A fight with Ricardo Mayorga.

Like the Derby, Mayorga fights seem to take place about once a year, and a few days later, its tough to explain what got us so excited. 

Mayorga has had a long career and won world titles, but since his career peaked with a pair of upset victories over Vernon Forrest, he’s morphed into the sport’s equivalent of a batting practice fastball drilled into the bleachers. 

There’s no doubt that a Ricardo Mayorga fight is entertaining—from his embarrassing press conference behavior to the pre-fight legal troubles that often have people laying odds on the him getting a travel visa  to the moment he is laid out on his back mid-ring, the Nicaraguan free spirit has us on the edge of our seats. 

He is often the perfect opponent for a fighter looking ahead to better things.  His face-first brawling style allows a fighter to land head-snapping highlight blows by the bushel, and while Mayorga has knockout power, his constant swinging from the heels makes it easy for even a rusty fighter to sidestep and counter punch. 

When Felix Trinidad was ready to end a 29-month layoff, he dialed Mayorga’s number.  And while Mayorga caught him with an early flash knockdown, Trinidad eventually found his range and teed off en route to an eighth round knockout that had the roaring Madison Square Garden crowd surround the ring with a wall of sound.   

When Oscar de la Hoya was ready to return to the ring after 20 months, he too looked up Mayorga. It’s safe to say that Mayorga’s repeated press conference slaps of de la Hoya and his insulting comments about Oscar’s wife and son did more damage to the Golden Boy than anything that happened in the ring. 

For both men, Mayorga was a gatekeeper for big-fight riches.  Trinidad went on to fight Winky Wright and Roy Jones Jr. in marquee bouts.  De la Hoya landed a blockbuster date with Floyd Mayweather Jr. in the wake of his showing against Mayorga. 

Ricardo Mayorga’s big name and easily dissected style provide the perfect showcase for a fighter hoping to look good.  And this Saturday, Sugar Shane Mosley will be the next man looking to say “Back, back, back…gone!”

However, there is a problem with Home Run Derby. 

Most pitchers don’t throw it 80 miles an hour, right where you are planning to swing.  They attempt to deceive and overpower the batter, and, as a result, most of their pitches don’t travel 550 feet and land in a river bordering the ballpark. 

As a result, many batters complain that appearing in Home Run Derby messes up their swing for the rest of the year.  After swinging for the fences all night, it’s tough to adjust back to regular pitching. 

“Everything that you were taught not to do you have to do in the home run contest,” Ken Griffey Jr. told USA Today. “It's either a home run or nothing. You try to forget that swing when the season starts (again), but there's not a lot of time. Bad mechanics can hang around a long time.” 

As a result, several sluggers have joined Griffey in their boycott of the annual event.  Alex Rodriguez has sworn off the contest, as did Mike Piazza several years ago.

Similarly, in boxing, most targets are a little harder to hit than Ricardo Mayorga.  Most opposing punches come from a variety of angles, after several feints, and aren’t telegraphed quite as blatantly.

So while no one ever looks better than when they are fighting Ricardo Mayorga, recent history shows that it leaves a fighter unprepared for the challenges they’ll face in the big-money fights to come. 

In the last five years, three men have beaten Ricardo Mayorga, with Cory Spinks joining Trinidad and de la Hoya in the ever-growing club.  Spinks was the first to record his victory and has gone 4-3 in seven fights since.  Trinidad and de la Hoya lost the high-profile fights that their execution of Mayorga helped land, and only a win by Oscar in a tune-up against Steve Forbes keeps him from being winless post-Mayorga. 

Now, a 5-6 record isn’t the end of the world, especially considering the level of opposition the three men faced.  However, none has registered a knockout since, nor come reasonably close.  Aside from an impressive Spinks decision over Zab Judah in his next bout, none has looked particularly good.   Certainly, none approached the level of brilliance they displayed in the ring with the Nicaraguan strongman. 

Trinidad in particular looked dreadfully outclassed in a bout with Winky Wright.  While Wright is a far safer opponent than Mayorga, power-wise, he is orders of magnitude more elusive.  After another poor showing against Jones, Trinidad went back into retirement, and its possible that only the prospect of a Mayorga rematch could lure him back.

Going farther back in time, we find Andrew “Six Heads” Lewis.  While he never beat Mayorga, he did leave the ring without losing, courtesy of a head-butt shortened no contest.  Since that 2001 bout, he’s gone 2-3-1.  More significantly, he’s gone from an undefeated welterweight titleholder to an intriguing nickname from the past.  His most recent in-ring action was a trilogy against someone named Denny Daulton for the Guyanan light middleweight crown. 

If we travel even farther into the past, we find three other men that notched victories over Mayorga, all in Latin America, all early in his career.  Henry Castillo followed up his decision with a knockout loss in the rematch, then never fought again.  Roger Benito Flores, 8-8 when he left the ring with a decision over Mayorga, went on to go 5-22-2 for the rest of his career.  Humberto Aranda was undefeated when he won Mayorga’s pro debut.  He would go on to lose 15 times. 

More significantly, the three men combined for 2 knockout losses at the time they faced Mayorga.  Afterward, they suffered a combined total of 22 stoppages. 

Now it is Shane Mosley’s turn.  Like the recent Home Run Derby contestants, he has his eyes on future riches, hoping to land a bout with Antonio Margarito.  As in the past, Mayorga’s act in the run-up to the fight is making the bout a must-see.  He’s suggested that Mosley wear pink gloves, said that Sugar Shane’s wife is the one that is “in charge” in their house, and said that Mosley will be home washing dishes when their fight is over.

More likely, Mosley will earn an impressive-looking win on Saturday, and land his date with Margarito, a wily elusive champion with punching power.  He is the kind of opponent that will require Mosley to be on his game, not searching to recover his swing. 

Ricardo Mayorga likes to threaten to mess up his opponents.  Unfortunately for both participants, it usually happens a few months down the road.