There were Willie Mays fans who were saddened to watch their hero look like a bumbling has-been in the final seasons of his brilliant career.
They preferred to remember the graceful, elegant ‘Say Hey Kid’ sprinting for what seemed like a quarter of a mile to catch a fly ball hit by Cleveland’s Vic Wertz at the Polo Grounds in the Game 1 of the 1954 World Series.
They didn’t want to see an aged Mays stumble and fall while playing centerfield for the New York Mets in the 1973 World Series.
By playing beyond his useful days, Mays only served to delay his Hall of Fame induction.
Such, sadly, is not the case in boxing.
Overstay your welcome in boxing and bad things inevitably happen.
Carlos ‘Famoso’ Hernandez is 38 and one of the finest men you’d ever want to meet. He’s also far past his useful days as a professional boxer, which is what makes his lightweight bout against rising prospect Vicente Escobedo on Saturday on a Golden Boy Promotions pay-per-view card at the Frank Erwin Center in Austin, Texas, so worrisome.
Hernandez is a fearless, aggressive fighter who has always pressed the issue, even when wading through a swarm of blows to get inside.
Far more of those blows land squarely these days, a fairly significant problem facing a young and hungry fighter with a lot to prove like Escobedo.
A 2004 US Olympian, Escobedo is 27 and once was one of the game’s best prospects. He was touted by many in the game as the next Oscar De La Hoya and quickly fell in love with himself. He got a big head, didn’t take his job as seriously as he needed to and was surpassed in the pecking order by others who were doing the things he should have been.
Escobedo, though, has seemingly rectified the problem. He appears to have matured and begun to develop into the fighter he was projected to be. He’s no De La Hoya, though few are. Escobedo is still a powerful, aggressive young fighter who all of a sudden has a sense of urgency.
It’s the wrong kind of fight for a 38-year-old whose best days are four, five years in his past and who has struggled recently to beat mid-level fighters.
Hernandez was originally slated to fight Jorge Barrios, but Barrios was forced to pull out because of a fractured temporal bone around his right eye.
Hernandez hasn’t looked anything like the fighter he once was when he held a version of the super featherweight title and went the distance with Floyd Mayweather Jr.
He was off for nearly two years after a loss to another faded ex-champion, Kevin Kelley, on Sept. 28, 2006, a bout he said he had trouble getting interested in.
On that fight, Hernandez said, “It was more like just going through the motions of boxing, just because I had to do it. It wasn’t something I wanted to do. It was just something that at the end I said, ‘Well, let’s do it.’ It’s not like I really mentally prepared for a fight, but I didn’t want to back down or back out of a fight. It was that I just said, ‘Let’s do it. Let’s take it.’ “
He came out of the bout with Kelley unscathed, with nothing other than an unnecessary loss on his schedule. But Kelley was 39 at the time and hardly the kind of threat that Escobedo will pose on Saturday.
It’s probably the competitor in Hernandez driving him back into the grind, but it’s hard to imagine where he’s going. Even if he’d found a way to win, there isn’t big money out there for him that would make the risk worthwhile.
Juan Manuel Marquez holds three of the four major lightweight belts, but Marquez is looking at fighting men like Manny Pacquiao and Mayweather, not an aged and on-the-decline ex-champion.
For Hernandez, that means nothing but tough fights and short money as long as he hangs around.
He understands that if he gets mauled by Escobedo, he may be forced to make his retirement permanent. He loves the game and loves the competition, but knows he needs to produce or, in all likelihood, it’s over.
“It’s not like I’m Escobedo’s age,” Hernandez said. “So to me, I’m pretty much backed into a corner and have to fight my way out of it. But Escobedo still has a future in boxing. So for me, it’s, of course, it’s do or die. And it kind of reminds me of when I was an up-and-coming fighter against an old veteran, Goyo Vargas and beating Goyo Vargas.
“That’s what opened the doors for me. So I see a young lion coming, wanting to fight against the old lion. But, we’re just going to have to wait [until Saturday] and let the bell sound and the fireworks should explode.”
Boxing historically hasn’t been kind to old lions. Hopefully, Hernandez can find a way to summon one last great fight.
It’s worrisome, though.
Hernandez is much too good of a man to go out the way many fear he’s going to. Kevin Iole / Eurosport
