Marquez Was Skillful Surgeon In World of Butchers

Published

12 years ago

December 11, 2012

Ron Borges

LAS VEGAS – Manny Pacquiao wanted to go toe-to-toe with Juan Manuel Marquez Saturday night. He never imagined such a battle might end with him face-to-floor.

Marquez may be the best counter puncher of his time, a skillful surgeon in a world of butchers. His is a technical proficiency and intellectual approach amid a world of beautiful brutality. Perhaps because of that Pacquiao forgot for a moment the great danger such a man represents at all times but perhaps most of all when it seems he is in trouble.

This was the fourth time the two had squared off, their first fight ending in a controversial draw and the next two unsatisfying disputed split and majority decisions in Pacquiao’s favor. In all three, Marquez had repeatedly landed stunning counter right hands, punches perfectly timed and annoyingly unavoidable by Pacquiao.

Thirteen months ago, Marquez appeared to have landed enough of them to have convincingly beaten Pacquiao only to again see his nemesis’ hand raised. He grew so angry and despondent in the days that followed that he pondered retirement. Manny Pacquiao now wishes he’d followed through on that thought.

What he and his handlers also wish is that Pacquiao had remembered the lesson of their first fight, when he managed to knock Marquez to the floor three times in the first round but barely emerged with a draw. There was a warning in that outcome but in the heat of the moment Saturday night, as the fight seemed to be turning toward the definitive ending both craved, Pacquiao did not heed it.

Angry about having been knocked down himself for the first time since 1999 in the third round by another counter right hand and emboldened in the fifth after dropping Marquez with a solid left, Pacquiao spent most of Round 6 fiercely closing the distance on Marquez and strafing him with powerful combinations.

Pacquiao had already split open the bridge of Marquez’s nose, sending blood careening across his face, and swelling his eyes and left cheek. What he had not done was break either his spirit or his focus. Even as blows rained down on him, Marquez remained what he has always been – both a fierce warrior in the Aztec tradition of his heritage and a completely focused professional hit man.

With the crowd of 16,348 at the MGM Grand Garden Arena roaring with a primal edge to their voices, Pacquiao and Marquez engaged in the toe-to-toe battle Pacquiao had wanted all along and Marquez’s 72-year-old trainer, Nacho Beristain, looked upon with the disdain of a man who favors intellect over bruising. Confident his moment of utter domination had arrived, Pacquiao bounced forward as Marquez took a short step back in the waning seconds of the sixth round, sending a hard right jab in The Technician’s direction.

It never arrived.

Instead, Marquez shot forward with his own counter right the instant Pacquiao’s shoulder shifted forward, the counter punch exploding unseen on Pacquiao’s jaw with concussive force. The instant it did the dream of dominance had been transferred.

Pacquiao’s body shuttered like a man walking the streets of Chicago in winter as an ill-wind howled. His hair flew up and his hands sagged straight down to his lap as he toppled forward, face first into the floor.

So powerful was the devastation that Pacquiao was unable even to break his fall, instead landing like a felled fir. His fists were tucked under him, no longer of use either as weapons or defense mechanisms. Like Pacquiao, they were disarmed.

As Pacquiao fell, Marquez’s mouth turned into a wide O, as if he too was shocked at the destructiveness of that right hand. Below them both Pacquiao’s cutman, Miguel Diaz, had been preparing his enswell but dropped it back into the ice bucket. It would not be needed.

“A fighter goes down like that, face first, it’s over,’’ Diaz said with the detachment of a doctor who has seen destruction too many times before to deny its existence any more.

Pacquiao lay on the floor motionless for several minutes as his future ticked away. Gone was not only the illusion of his past dominance of Marquez but also the delusion a fight with Floyd Mayweather in his future. Outside the ropes his tearful wife, Jinkee, tried to reach her husband but was held back because no one was yet sure how complete his destruction was.

Eventually he stirred after a cold towel was applied to his head. When he awoke he had no idea what happened, believing for a moment he thought he had won. It was the last delusion of the night for him.

“I was starting to get careless because I thought I had him,’’ Pacquiao (54-5-2 38 KO) admitted after several minutes of stone unconsciousness were followed by a glassy-eyed revival. “I was so overconfident I thought ‘I got him.’ I never expected that punch. He got me a good one.’’

To not expect a counter puncher to try and counter speaks to how the moment can overwhelm even the most seasoned boxer. Pacquiao had eaten more right hand counters in the 42 rounds he’d fought with Marquez than in the entire rest of his 61-fight career, yet with the kind of dominating victory he craved so near he forgot for a moment exactly who he was in with.

He didn’t re-learn that lesson until hours later when he watched the fight’s replay in his hotel suite at Mandalay Bay, right across the street from the MGM Grand Garden Arena where he had been defeated. He had returned there after a CT scan at a local hospital proved negative and as he sat surrounded by his entourage Marquez was across the street glorying in victory while Beristain looked at him the way a proud father does a mischievous son who has engaged in behavior he’d been warned about and still emerged victorious.

“I knew the last three rounds Manny was going for the knockout,’’ Marquez said. “I could have been knocked out at any time. I also knew I could knock him out.

“I was fighting on the inside but with a lot of intelligence. I threw the perfect punch.’’

He had already sent Pacquiao crashing down on his back for the first time since 1999 with a counter right in the third round but he’d also been knocked down himself by a left hand in the fifth and his face had begun to show the dents and bruises that result from too many toe-to-toe clashes with an opponent whose goal was to lure you into them.

The bridge of Marquez’s nose had been split open and was bleeding profusely and his face had begun to puff around both eyes and along his left cheek. At that moment he looked every one of his 39 years, a counter puncher who was still landing but also finding himself too often on the wrong end of those exchanges.

But a fighter as smart as Marquez is seldom unaware of both his circumstances and how to right them and so he waited, cunning in his retreat late in the round, as Pacquiao charged him again as Marquez anticipated he would.

By now Pacquiao’s defense, never his best trait, had grown lax. His thoughts were not on protection but rather destruction as he snapped that hard right hand forward, expecting Marquez to retreat into the turnbuckle behind him.

And then he was asleep, awakening some time later to an entirely new world.

Where does boxing’s most popular fighter go from here? No one, not even Pacquiao, can know. He is now on a two-fight losing streak (although his loss to Tim Bradley is so suspect no one considers it one but the record books), the $100-milion dollar showdown with Floyd Mayweather has gone away and his four-fight struggle with Marquez has at least temporarily ended with the Mexican’s hand raised not only Saturday night but probably over the entire affair.

“Everyone would like to see a knockout because (then) all the close fights would go to that person,’’ suggested Pacquiao’s trainer, Freddie Roach, several days before the fight. It was not a thought he ever felt would apply to Pacquiao but that is where he stands today, $25 million richer but poorer in a way that will haunt him for some time.

Immediately after the fight Pacquiao insisted he would fight again while Marquez spoke only of a long rest and decisions to be made. For Marquez the time to retire might never be more perfect.

He had his hand raised, something he said was what fueled the long months of preparation he pushed himself through, he has at least $6 million in his pocket and he has nothing more to prove.

He had won with guile and grit a fight that was for no championship other than the championship over his great rival. If he leaves now, boxing will have ended for him the way it does for few others. It would have ended well.

The same is not true for Manny Pacquiao, who likely will return in the spring against someone newer, younger, hungrier with an old lesson freshly in his mind: the boxing ring is no place for blind aggression.

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Ron Borges

Avila Perspective, Chap. 326: Top Rank and San Diego Smoke

Published

8 hours ago

May 9, 2025

David A. Avila

Avila Perspective, Chap. 326: Top Rank and San Diego Smoke

Years ago, I worked at a newsstand in the Beverly Hills area. It was a 24-hour a day version and the people that dropped by were very colorful and unique.

One elderly woman Eva, who bordered on homeless but pridefully wore lipstick, would stop by the newsstand weekly to purchase a pack of menthol cigarettes. On one occasion, she asked if I had ever been to San Diego?

I answered “yes, many times.”

She countered “you need to watch out for San Diego Smoke.”

This Saturday, Top Rank brings its brand of prizefighting to San Diego or what could be called San Diego Smoke. Leading the fight card is Mexico’s Emanuel Navarrete (39-2-1, 32 KOs) defending the WBO super feather title against undefeated Filipino Charly Suarez (18-0, 10 KOs) at Pechanga Arena. ESPN will televise.

This is Navarrete’s fourth defense of the super feather title.

The last time Navarrete stepped in the boxing ring he needed six rounds to dismantle the very capable Oscar Valdez in their rematch. One thing about Mexico City’s Navarrete is he always brings “the smoke.”

Also, on the same card is Fontana, California’s Raymond Muratalla (22-0, 17 KOs) vying for the interim IBF lightweight title against Russia’s Zaur Abdullaev (20-1, 12 KOs) on the co-main event.

Abdullaev has only fought once before in the USA and was handily defeated by Devin Haney back in 2019. But that was six years ago and since then he has knocked off various contenders.

Muratalla is a slick fighting lightweight who trains at the Robert Garcia Boxing Academy now in Moreno Valley, Calif. It’s a virtual boot camp with many of the top fighters on the West Coast available to spar on a daily basis. If you need someone bigger or smaller, stronger or faster someone can match those needs.

When you have that kind of preparation available, it’s tough to beat. Still, you have to fight the fight. You never know what can happen inside the prize ring.

Another fighter to watch is Perla Bazaldua, 19, a young and very talented female fighter out of the Los Angeles area. She is trained by Manny Robles who is building a small army of top female fighters.

Bazaldua (1-0, 1 KO) meets Mona Ward (0-1) in a super flyweight match on the preliminary portion of the Top Rank card. Top Rank does not sign many female fighters so you know that they believe in her talent.

Others on the Top Rank card in San Diego include Giovani Santillan, Andres Cortes, Albert Gonzalez, Sebastian Gonzalez and others.

They all will bring a lot of smoke to San Diego.

Probox TV

A strong card led by Erickson “The Hammer” Lubin (26-2, 18 KOs) facing Ardreal Holmes Jr. (17-0, 6 KOs) in a super welterweight clash between southpaws takes place on Saturday at Silver Spurs Arena in Kissimmee, Florida. PROBOX TV will stream the fight card.

Ardreal has rocketed up the standings and now faces veteran Lubin whose only losses came against world titlists Sebastian Fundora and Jermell Charlo. It’s a great match to decide who deserves a world title fight next.

Another juicy match pits Argentina’s Nazarena Romero (14-0-2) against Mexico’s Mayelli Flores (12-1-1) in a female super bantamweight contest.

Nottingham, England

Anthony Cacace (23-1, 8 KOs) defends the IBO super featherweight title against Leigh Wood (28-3, 17 KOs) in Wood’s hometown on Saturday at Nottingham Arena in Nottingham, England. DAZN will stream the Queensberry Promotions card.

Ireland’s Cacace seems to have the odds against him. But he is no stranger to dancing in the enemy’s lair or on foreign territory. He formerly defeated Josh Warrington in London and Joe Cordina in Riyadh in IBO title defenses.

Lampley at Wild Card

Boxing telecaster Jim Lampley will be signing his new book It Happened! at the Wild Card Boxing gym in Hollywood, Calif. on Saturday, May 10, beginning at 2 p.m. Lampley has been a large part of many of the greatest boxing events in the past 40 years. He and Freddie Roach will be at the signing.

Fights to Watch (All times Pacific Time)

Sat. DAZN 11 a.m. Anthony Cacace (23-1) vs Leigh Wood (28-3).

Sat. PROBOX.tv 3 p.m. Erickson Lubin (26-2) vs Ardreal Holmes Jr. (17-0).

Sat. ESPN 7 p.m. Emanuel Navarrete (39-2-1) vs Charly Suarez (18-0); Raymond Muratalla (22-0) vs Zaur Abdullaev (20-1).

Photo credit: Mikey Williams / Top Rank

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“Breadman” Edwards: An Unlikely Boxing Coach with a Panoramic View of the Sport

Published

1 day ago

May 8, 2025

Arne K. Lang

Stephen-Breadman-Edwards-An-Unlikely-Boxing-Coach-with-a-Panoramic-View-of-the-Sport

Stephen “Breadman” Edwards’ first fighter won a world title. That may be some sort of record.

It’s true. Edwards had never trained a fighter, amateur or pro, before taking on professional novice Julian “J Rock” Williams. On May 11, 2019, Williams wrested the IBF 154-pound world title from Jarrett Hurd. The bout, a lusty skirmish, was in Fairfax, Virginia, near Hurd’s hometown in Maryland, and the previously undefeated Hurd had the crowd in his corner.

In boxing, Stephen Edwards wears two hats. He has a growing reputation as a boxing coach, a hat he will wear on Saturday, May 31, at Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas when the two fighters that he currently trains, super middleweight Caleb Plant and middleweight Kyrone Davis, display their wares on a show that will air on Amazon Prime Video. Plant, who needs no introduction, figures to have little trouble with his foe in a match conceived as an appetizer to a showdown with Jermall Charlo. Davis, coming off his career-best win, an upset of previously undefeated Elijah Garcia, is in tough against fast-rising Cuban prospect Yoenli Hernandez, a former world amateur champion.

Edwards’ other hat is that of a journalist. His byline appears at “Boxing Scene” in a column where he answers questions from readers.

It’s an eclectic bag of questions that Breadman addresses, ranging from his thoughts on an upcoming fight to his thoughts on one of the legendary prizefighters of olden days. Boxing fans, more so than fans of any other sport, enjoy hashing over fantasy fights between great fighters of different eras. Breadman is very good at this, which isn’t to suggest that his opinions are gospel, merely that he always has something provocative to add to the discourse. Like all good historians, he recognizes that the best history is revisionist history.

“Fighters are constantly mislabled,” he says. “Everyone talks about Joe Louis’s right hand. But if you study him you see that his left hook is every bit as good as his right hand and it’s more sneaky in terms of shock value when it lands.”

Stephen “Breadman” Edwards was born and raised in Philadelphia. His father died when he was three. His maternal grandfather, a Korean War veteran, filled the void. The man was a big boxing fan and the two would watch the fights together on the family television.

Edwards’ nickname dates to his early teen years when he was one of the best basketball players in his neighborhood. The derivation is the 1975 movie “Cornbread, Earl and Me,” starring Laurence Fishburne in his big screen debut. Future NBA All-Star Jamaal Wilkes, fresh out of UCLA, plays Cornbread, a standout high school basketball player who is mistakenly murdered by the police.

Coming out of high school, Breadman had to choose between an academic scholarship at Temple or an athletic scholarship at nearby Lincoln University. He chose the former, intending to major in criminal justice, but didn’t stay in college long. What followed were a succession of jobs including a stint as a city bus driver. To stay fit, he took to working out at the James Shuler Memorial Gym where he sparred with some of the regulars, but he never boxed competitively.

Over the years, Philadelphia has harbored some great boxing coaches. Among those of recent vintage, the names George Benton, Bouie Fisher, Nazeem Richardson, and Bozy Ennis come quickly to mind. Breadman names Richardson and West Coast trainer Virgil Hunter as the men that have influenced him the most.

We are all a product of our times, so it’s no surprise that the best decade of boxing, in Breadman’s estimation, was the 1980s. This was the era of the “Four Kings” with Sugar Ray Leonard arguably standing tallest.

Breadman was a big fan of Leonard and of Leonard’s three-time rival Roberto Duran. “I once purchased a DVD that had all of Roberto Duran’s title defenses on it,” says Edwards. “This was a back before the days of YouTube.”

But Edwards’ interest in the sport goes back much deeper than the 1980s. He recently weighed in on the “Pittsburgh Windmill” Harry Greb whose legend has grown in recent years to the point that some have come to place him above Sugar Ray Robinson on the list of the greatest of all time.

“Greb was a great fighter with a terrific resume, of that there is no doubt,” says Breadman, “but there is no video of him and no one alive ever saw him fight, so where does this train of thought come from?”

Edwards notes that in Harry Greb’s heyday, he wasn’t talked about in the papers as the best pound-for-pound fighter in the sport. The boxing writers were partial to Benny Leonard who drew comparisons to the venerated Joe Gans.

Among active fighters, Breadman reserves his highest praise for Terence Crawford. “Body punching is a lost art,” he once wrote. “[Crawford] is a great body puncher who starts his knockouts with body punches, but those punches are so subtle they are not fully appreciated.”

If the opening line holds up, Crawford will enter the ring as the underdog when he opposes Canelo Alvarez in September. Crawford, who will enter the ring a few weeks shy of his 38^th birthday, is actually the older fighter, older than Canelo by almost three full years (it doesn’t seem that way since the Mexican redhead has been in the public eye so much longer), and will theoretically be rusty as 13 months will have elapsed since his most recent fight.

Breadman discounts those variables. “Terence is older,” he says, “but has less wear and tear and never looks rusty after a long layoff.” That Crawford will win he has no doubt, an opinion he tweaked after Canelo’s performance against William Scull: “Canelo’s legs are not the same. Bud may even stop him now.”

Edwards has been with Caleb Plant for Plant’s last three fights. Their first collaboration produced a Knockout of the Year candidate. With one ferocious left hook, Plant sent Anthony Dirrell to dreamland. What followed were a 12-round setback to David Benavidez and a ninth-round stoppage of Trevor McCumby.

Breadman keeps a hectic schedule. From Monday through Friday, he’s at the DLX Gym in Las Vegas coaching Caleb Plant and Kyrone Davis. On weekends, he’s back in Philadelphia, checking in on his investment properties and, of greater importance, watching his kids play sports. His 14-year-old daughter and 12-year-old son are standout all-around athletes.

On those long flights, he has plenty of time to turn on his laptop and stream old fights or perhaps work on his next article. That’s assuming he can stay awake.

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Arne’s Almanac: The Good, the Bad, and the (Mostly) Ugly; a Weekend Boxing Recap and More

Published

3 days ago

May 6, 2025

Arne K. Lang

Arne's-Almanac-The-Good-the-Bad-and-the-(mostly)-Ugly-A-Weeend-Boxing-Recap-and-More

Arne’s Almanac: The Good, the Bad, and the (Mostly) Ugly; a Weekend Boxing Recap and More

It’s old news now, but on back-to-back nights on the first weekend of May, there were three fights that finished in the top six snoozefests ever as measured by punch activity. That’s according to CompuBox which has been around for 40 years.

In Times Square, the boxing match between Devin Haney and Jose Carlos Ramirez had the fifth-fewest number of punches thrown, but the main event, Ryan Garcia vs. Rolly Romero, was even more of a snoozefest, landing in third place on this ignoble list.

Those standings would be revised the next night – knocked down a peg when Canelo Alvarez and William Scull combined to throw a historically low 445 punches in their match in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, 152 by the victorious Canelo who at least pressed the action, unlike Scull (pictured) whose effort reminded this reporter of “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” – no, not the movie starring Paul Newman, just the title.

CompuBox numbers, it says here, are best understood as approximations, but no amount of rejiggering can alter the fact that these three fights were stinkers. Making matters worse, these were pay-per-views. If one had bundled the two events, rather than buying each separately, one would have been out $90 bucks.

****

Thankfully, the Sunday card on ESPN from Las Vegas was redemptive. It was just what the sport needed at this moment – entertaining fights to expunge some of the bad odor. In the main go, Naoya Inoue showed why he trails only Shohei Ohtani as the most revered athlete in Japan.

Throughout history, the baby-faced assassin has been a boxing promoter’s dream. It’s no coincidence that down through the ages the most common nickname for a fighter – and by an overwhelming margin — is “Kid.”

And that partly explains Naoya Inoue’s charisma. The guy is 32 years old, but here in America he could pass for 17.

Joey Archer

Joey Archer, who passed away last week at age 87 in Rensselaer, New York, was one of the last links to an era of boxing identified with the nationally televised Friday Night Fights at Madison Square Garden.

Joey Archer

Archer made his debut as an MSG headliner on Feb. 4, 1961, and had 12 more fights at the iconic mid-Manhattan sock palace over the next six years. The final two were world title fights with defending middleweight champion Emile Griffith.

Archer etched his name in the history books in November of 1965 in Pittsburgh where he won a comfortable 10-round decision over Sugar Ray Robinson, sending the greatest fighter of all time into retirement. (At age 45, Robinson was then far past his peak.)

Born and raised in the Bronx, Joey Archer was a cutie; a clever counter-puncher recognized for his defense and ultimately for his granite chin. His style was embedded in his DNA and reinforced by his mentors.

Early in his career, Archer was domiciled in Houston where he was handled by veteran trainer Bill Gore who was then working with world lightweight champion Joe Brown. Gore would ride into the Hall of Fame on the coattails of his most famous fighter, “Will-o’-the Wisp” Willie Pep. If Joey Archer had any thoughts of becoming a banger, Bill Gore would have disabused him of that notion.

In all honesty, Archer’s style would have been box office poison if he had been black. It helped immensely that he was a native New Yorker of Irish stock, albeit the Irish angle didn’t have as much pull as it had several decades earlier. But that observation may not be fair to Archer who was bypassed twice for world title fights after upsetting Hurricane Carter and Dick Tiger.

When he finally caught up with Emile Griffith, the former hat maker wasn’t quite the fighter he had been a few years earlier but Griffith, a two-time Fighter of the Year by The Ring magazine and the BWAA and a future first ballot Hall of Famer, was still a hard nut to crack.

Archer went 30 rounds with Griffith, losing two relatively tight decisions and then, although not quite 30 years old, called it quits. He finished 45-4 with 8 KOs and was reportedly never knocked down, yet alone stopped, while answering the bell for 365 rounds. In retirement, he ran two popular taverns with his older brother Jimmy Archer, a former boxer who was Joey’s trainer and manager late in Joey’s career.

May he rest in peace.

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