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BARRERA-JUAREZ AFTERMATH By Graham Houston PhilBoxing.com Thu, 25 May 2006  Great fighters have to grow old some time and Marco Antonio Barrera, at the age of 32 and after a long career and some hard fights, may be just starting to fade. Certainly he was in a life and death struggle against Rocky Juarez, when Barrera needed to call on all his guts and guile to pull out a split decision win in a fight originally announced as a draw only for an error in the tabulation of the scorecards to be discovered. Juarez was tough, gritty and capable and he nearly pulled off the upset. The underdog from Houston, TX, says he will fight better should he get a rematch with Barrera and I believe him. All the more reason for Barrera not to want to meet him again, then, although the 130-pound champion says he will fight whoever Golden Boy Promotions, his promoter, wants to put in front of him. Had the originally announced decision of a draw been the actual verdict I think there might have been a certain amount of pressure on Barrera to give Rocky a rematch. As it stands, though, Barrera got the decision, close though the fight was, and he might be thinking: “Why go through that again when I’ve already got the win over this guy?” This was, without question, one of Barrera’s hardest fights. He fought from the second round with a bloody nose after Juarez had cracked him with a left hook, and there were times when he looked as if he might be starting to wilt. Barrera’s heart and his great championship-fight experience pulled him through. Even though he looked more tired and more battered than Juarez he reached within himself to fight it out with his strong, younger opponent in the last two fiercely contested rounds, simply refusing to let the challenger mount the closing charge that could have decided the fight. Ringside at the Staples Center, it seemed that the fight was hanging in the balance in the 11th and 12th rounds. I gave both rounds to Juarez and had him snatching a draw, 114-114, but I hesitated before marking my score for round 11 and I certainly could have no argument with the two judges who gave the round to Barrera. Although Juarez seemed to hurt Barrera in each of the last two rounds the champion came back firing with the pride and spirit of a true Mexican ring warrior: I noted in the 12th: “B. throwing everything he has at him.” And on to the scoring, with Thailand’s Anek Hongtongkam marking Barrera ahead by 115-113 and Japan’s Ken Morita scoring it for the champion by 115-114, while Las Vegas judge Duane Ford had Juarez ahead by 115-114. The original tabulation, with the judges’ scores entered on the master scoresheet, had judges Ford and Morita giving the last round to Juarez: we now know that the judges in question each had the last round 10-10. How could this happen? Perhaps more easily than you might think. Juarez’s name appeared first — on the left — on the master scoresheet. As it is almost unheard of nowadays for judges to score a 10-10 round in any of the top boxing states, or in championship fights held in America, the person entering the scores onto the master sheet might, in the excitement of the moment, have glanced at the “10” in Juarez’s column and automatically entered the “9” for Barrera — after all, every other round had been 10-9, one way or the other. This sort of thing comes into the realm of human error. It shouldn’t happen, but it does. It happened in San Antonio, TX, when Azumah Nelson was announced as a split decision winner over Jesse James Leija, but the crowd was informed later in the evening that one judge’s score had been incorrectly entered on the master scoresheet: Instead of a one-point win for the great Ghanaian boxer the verdict was a draw. Another case that comes to mind was the welterweight title bout between Ike Quartey and Jose Luis Lopez at Foxwoods, when a majority decision win for Quartey became a draw after an error in entering the scores on the master sheet was discovered. All this is of no solace to Juarez, though. It was disappointing enough for the Juarez camp to have to settle for the draw in a fight they believed their man had won and it must have been a bitter blow to find out that in fact the decision had gone against them. The California commission showed Juarez’s promoters, Main Events, the actual individual-round scores of all three judges and they accepted, if unhappily, the fact that an honest mistake had been made at the master-scoresheet stage. The feeling around ringside was that this was either an even fight, 114-114, or a two-point fight either way. Juarez quickly let it be known that he was going to be a dangerous adversary as he pressed forward and punched precisely. Barrera looked a little shocked when his nose streamed blood in the second round, and when Juarez’s left hook sent the champion stumbling off balance in the third an upset looked distinctly possible. Barrera showed his savvy with bursts of punches and deft use of the left jab — and some of his left hooks to the body might have crumpled a lesser fighter than the 26-year-old Olympic silver medallist. The fighting was intense and at times ferocious, with some rousing exchanges. Barrera had his biggest round in the sixth when he beat Juarez back around the ring but by the eighth the challenger was coming on strongly, with the older fighter seemingly trying to conserve stamina for the later rounds. A big right hand backed up Barrera in the 10th and Juarez seemed to have gained control of the contest, only for the champion to rally in the ebb-and-flow, punch-for-punch, final two rounds. It seems strange that neither judges Ford nor Morita could find a winner in the 12th, but if they felt the last round was so closely fought that they could not take it away from either man then so be it. A similar thing happened in a heavyweight title fight draw between Michael Dokes and Mike Weaver in Las Vegas in 1983 when two judges — Harold Lederman and Larry Hazzard — made the last round even. I do not begrudge Barrera getting the benefit of a judge’s apparent doubt after all the pleasure he has given to boxing fans over the long years but I did get the feeling that he was almost at the end of his tether in the fight’s final stages while Juarez looked as if he could have kept grinding on for another three rounds if we were back in the 15-round days. Just a few more punches in a couple of rounds could have won this fight for Juarez and I must admit I was a little surprised as well as being impressed by the consistently high quality of his fighting and his coolness in the heat of battle against an elite veteran. On this occasion, Juarez did not quite do enough, but I think his best is yet to come — but I fear we may have seen the best of Barrera. Click here to view a list of other articles written by Graham Houston.  |
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