It really was Marco Antonio Barrera?s last fight. After an early career marked by reckless exchanges with all comers and a late career marked by careful exchanges with well-selected comers, sometime in the last month Barrera decided he could do it no longer. He was bored with the routine and finished with the fight game. Just in time, too.
Saturday night, before 10,112 impassioned Mexican and Filipino fans, Barrera made his final stand against Manny Pacquiao ? a man rightfully considered one of the world?s two best prizefighters. The event was promoted as ?Will to Win,? but there was a simpleton?s irony in that. ?Will to Hear the Final Bell? or ?Will to Earn a Last Paycheck? would have been more apt.
Barrera knew it. When the judges? scorecards all favored Pacquiao ? 118-109, 118-109 and 115-112 ? Barrera offered little more than a cry of ??Viva Mexico!? and a defiant smile, marking the end of his prizefighting career.
For Oscar de la Hoya, Barrera?s promoter, there was sadness at the press conference afterwards. Barrera had become an overqualified employee in De la Hoya?s company, a guy who was too smart for the corporation, quietly resenting each new workday and the boss who caused it. Still, De la Hoya?s eyes glistened as Barrera spoke. Barrera?s didn?t, though.
After De la Hoya and co-promoter Bob Arum finished some dull rhetorical flourishes and a competition for Most Sincere Promoter, Barrera shuffled to the podium in a polo shirt and dark jeans. He spoke first in unbecoming English. Then, formalities completed, he spoke eloquently to his Mexican countrymen in Spanish.
?It is time to say goodbye to this beautiful sport. But if I could be reborn, again I would want to be a fighter.?
There was, as always, a pattern to the cadence of Barrera?s Spanish delivery. Probably nothing marked Barrera?s career better than patterns, his and his astute recognition of others?. Pattern recognition, finally, is the measure of human intelligence. And there may not have been a more intelligent prizefighter in this era.
After making action fights through his first seven years, and winning and defending a world title, Barrera lost twice to Junior Jones and changed his style. He underwent surgery to place a protective metal plate on his skull, told no one, then moved forward with his career and began to calculate. At a crossroads fight two years later, he lost to Erik Morales in a rabid spectacle that made both men boxing immortals.
A career-defining victory would come 14 months later, when Barrera did the world a favor and embarrassed Naseem Hamed into effective retirement. Next came two monumental victories over Morales. And then came business decisions and insincerity and a practical abandonment of his crowd-pleasing style.
But Barrera knew how much he?d done and how long he could glide on past achievements. He began to fight enough to decision opponents. Then he began to box 30 seconds of each round and expect sympathetic judging ? he was, after all, the great Mexican warrior Barrera, and favorable judging was his due.
He lost a decision to Juan Manuel Marquez in March and chastised his promoter for not ensuring that scorecards came out the right way. Then he signed to fight Pacquiao, pound-for-pound the most feared puncher in the world. Another calculation for Barrera ? the recognition of another pattern.
In Pacquiao, Barrera had a fine opponent for his purposes. Pacquiao?s power was so ballyhooed that Barrera could do nothing to win and still receive accolades for surviving. And if perchance Pacquiao landed a straight left hand and put the lights out for Barrera, the end would be quick and comparatively painless.
There was not a Barrera-initiated exchange, all Saturday night. He jabbed and circled and discouraged Pacquiao?s lust for contact. When Pacquiao lunged forward and hurt him, Barrera fought maniacally for a second or two ? or until he could tie Pacquiao up.
For a second consecutive fight, Pacquiao was not his sharpest. His talents are sensational enough that even at 75 percent ? roughly where Pacquiao was Saturday ? he has enough to shut-out a future hall of famer. But at the start of the championship rounds, when Judge Tom Shreck bizarrely had the bout even, Pacquiao?s legs were not strong.
If ringside observers noted this, surely Barrera did too. But pressing the action and attempting to stop Pacquiao was never in Barrera?s plans. The retirement party Barrera threw for himself held no place for such self-endangering bravado.
Barrera fought the last two rounds the way he fought the first 10, doing enough to keep Pacquiao from hurting him badly but otherwise committing no more than 30 seconds of each stanza to punching. When the final bell rang, Barrera strolled to his corner and had to be reminded to raise his hands and act like he?d won.
In the press room afterwards, Pacquiao helped join in the accounts of Barrera?s great showing and greater career. For having been across from Barrera for 36 minutes of combat, though, Pacquiao seemed unconvinced by his own testimony. He kindly embraced Barrera, who?d fouled him a number of times during the fight ? including an egregious hitting-on-the-break episode that cost Barrera a meaningless, and unmarked, point in the 11th round ? and congratulated him.
Then a spellbound De la Hoya returned to the podium and said, ?Who thought Barrera could go 12 rounds with Pacquiao? But that?s what Barrera?s about!?
And of course that was all wrong. Going 12 rounds, while losing 11 of them, was never what Barrera was about.
For many years, by allowing his glistening brain to be sloshed against his cranium for others? entertainment, Barrera was about giving fans more than they deserved. But finally, by continuing to overpay for tickets and telecasts that featured uninspired performances, fans were starting to give Barrera more than he deserved. Barrera knew this and left just in time. Adios, campe?n.
