It was once a fight of momentum and trajectory. That changed however, on August 24th, 2013, when Abner Mares and Leo Santa Cruz, who face each other at Staples Center in Los Angeles on Saturday night, shared a Golden Boy Promotions card in nearby Carson.
Having worked his way through the bone and gristle of the bantamweight division, Mares, 29-1-1 (15), moved to featherweight, where he looked to build on a title-winning stoppage of Daniel Ponce DeLeon. His opponent, Jhonny Gonzalez, needed less than a round to corkscrew Mares into the canvas.
Further stumbles followed. There was his endorsement of The Money Team, a show of allegiance interpreted by many as nothing short of an identity crisis. There was also a failed experiment with Virgil Hunter. Motivated by a respect for return fire, Mares, 29, entrusted Hunter with shoring up his defense. Not with Mares, not with Andre Berto, Alfredo Angulo or Amir Khan, has Hunter been able to produce results remotely like those he has achieved with Andre Ward, (a fighter who could beat much of the field with Oxana Malaya working his corner). Hunter was gone after one fight. A return to trainer Clemente Medina did not bring with it a return to form: Mares still looks like a fighter with tenuous confidence and this image is reinforced by his decision to pursue opponents not named Jhonny Gonzalez. If Mares has relearned his identity at the expense of the middling opposition he has faced since Gonzalez, he has kept this discovery secret. So much then, for momentum.
On the Gonzalez-Mares undercard, Santa Cruz, 30-0-1 (17), razed Victor Terrazas in three rounds. Terrazas, having just beaten Christian Mijares, was perhaps the last opponent expected to provide Santa Cruz with any riddles?not enough to imperil him, of course, but enough to further inflate the burgeoning reputation of this ?Mini-Margarito.? Santa Cruz has since embraced Haymonomics so fully that his promoter, Oscar De La Hoya, exasperated by Santa Cruz? reticence to do anything more noteworthy than name his son after his advisor, sold the contract of ?El Terremoto? to Al Haymon. A fighter who, on the back of his anachronistic schedule and relentless assault, was once expected to help shoulder the dreams of boxing?s most devoted legion of aficionados has since fallen out of favor even with Mexicans who made apologies on behalf of Mares? TMT apparel.
It is perhaps indicative of Santa Cruz? promise that his squandering of it has produced such bitterness. His aversion to danger, his exploitation of unmerited privilege, and his doing it under Haymon?s purview led to, among other forms of cyber-hatred, an Instagram video of an autographed photograph of Santa Cruz being burned in effigy. But nothing changed. So much, then, for trajectory.
Still, at a time when the PBC has lost nearly all of its own momentum, when its own trajectory points to future hardly long enough to do more than fatten another tick, Mares-Santa Cruz is a welcome change from the typical: it is a fight with real stakes. Although it is difficult to see either man suffer financially should he lose on Saturday?Haymon clients will still be overcompensated as ?Master Al? spends frivolously the money of others?neither man can afford a defeat. With a loss, Mares will be considered a fighter who lost his nerve permanently with the first stoppage he suffered; a fighter who, despite a stretch of competition that even Carl Froch might not look down his crooked nose at, never really got off the canvas the night Gonzalez unmade him.
And Santa Cruz, Huetamo, Mexico via Rosemead, California, who has perhaps naively, even innocently parroted the party line about business decisions while turning down worthy challenge after worthy challenge? He will fare even worse should he lose the only competitively matched fight of his career: becoming a fighter known and despised for his willingness to douse his ambition for a lapdog?s existence, and one deservedly chewed up when he was let off leash.
How does each fighter stave off such a fate? Mares, born in Guadalajara, Mexico, but now living in Montebello, California, must look to the past, must rediscover some of his former nerve to regain his momentum on Saturday night. It is fair to wonder whether he can do that, especially against a pressure fighter who stands to find him with some regularity (though one should expect Mares to temper any unappreciated aggression with his typical disregard of the rules). Mares has looked less eager to mix it up in his comeback, but that may serve him well against Santa Cruz, who is the weaker boxer of the two. Santa Cruz, if he is to end his protracted nosedive, must prove that he is more than a stagnating talent, more than just another coddled prospect underdeveloped and ill-prepared for the realities of a fight not stacked in his favor. There are reasons to doubt Santa Cruz, 27, as well, the void in quality between the names on his ledger and the fighter awaiting him chief among them.
Of course, Mares and Santa Cruz could prove equally matched, and wage the type of war that purifies and redeems. Neither man has shown much of late to expect that quality of contest, which should be motivation enough for the type of fighters they purport to be.
