The Counterpuncher.
He?s not a front runner. He is patient. Watching, calculating. Defense first, elusive tack. He takes what you give him and turns it around. Catch the grenade and toss it back.
Juan Manuel Marquez is certainly among the greatest counterpunchers in the history of the sport. He may even be the best. And those things that are intertwined in his fighter’s DNA are also what encapsulates much of his career and how he will go down in boxing lore.
That patience and technical acuity are not only stalwart strengths of Marquez in the ring, but it is those same traits that define the long-smoldering fuse of “Dynamita?s” career.
His trilogy with arch-nemesis, Manny Pacquiao, lays out like his career in microcosm.
Out of the gate, disaster… losing his first fight by disqualification in ’93 for a headbutt, glossy unbeaten record never to be — against Pacquiao down three times, in round 1. Busted nose, staring up at the bright lights, blood pounding in his ears, crowd raucous, thick with cheers and jeers.
A career started 0-1, pulling himself together and rattling off 29 straight victories in the next six years — getting off the deck and putting on a clinic of counterpunching perfection to battle back the Filipino fury, salvaging a draw from the disaster-strewn first stanza.
After these opening struggles… the perseverance, the second chance.
Those 29 victories upended by a lackluster Freddie Norwood loss on his first big stage — that hard fought, spectacular draw with Pacquiao undone by an ill advised choice to face unheralded Chris John for short money in the Indonesian jungle.
And then the patience. Biding time, adapting and adjusting, in ring and out. Giving and taking more.
The rest of his career has unfolded much as the middle bout of the Pacquiao saga played out. Stretches of exciting brilliance, but pockmarks of violent setbacks, knockdowns, moments on the brink. Yet unlike his early career — performances of tedious, technical brilliance, that new willingness to tear away his reserved nature, unleash ferocious attacks like a wild dog bent on survival.
At times it’s almost as if Marquez is caught between his early cerebral dissector disposition, and his late career fire-in-the-blood warrior fever vision — the extreme patience to wait in the wings and bide time watching Pacquiao?s triumphant surge through the welterweight division… and the impetuous grab at greatness in calling out Floyd Mayweather hunkered several divisions above his own.
If that strange dichotomy of character exists now, anyone who has followed Marquez? career for more than this last chapter or two knows that it was not always the case.
In the old days, Marquez cut a textbook silhouette and possessed a young apprentice’s razor focus on performing Svengali trainer extraordinaire Nacho Beristain?s exacting assignments.
Those early bouts built the man that would later have all the skills in the world, but also showed glimpses of the fire that coursed through his blood, unneeded and mostly unused for years at a time.
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Oct. 19, 1996: Three years into his career, the 23-year-old Marquez steps in to face unheralded Darryl Pinckney. Known as ?The Nightmare,? Pinckney is just coming off a 7th round stoppage of Guty Espades Jr. who would later go on to give Erik Morales a close fight several years later.
A veteran of 45 fights, Pinckney is surprised early with a string of three left hooks Marquez, ever the combo puncher, fires his way. All three land and the last sends the Floridian down to the mat, the ropes all that keep him from launching out into the spectators seated nearby like some errant palm frond in a hurricane.
Pinckney is a tough pro, though, and recovers fast. Several rounds later, in the 7th, Marquez is caught lunging forward and gets clipped with a compact left hook that puts him on his seat. It’s the first knockdown in his career. He isn?t hurt, but a bit chagrined. Business-like, he gets to his feet and re-establishes himself. They battle on for a few more rounds.
A straight right flattens Pinckney in the 9th, twirling him viciously to the mat face first. He snaps into a crouch and waits for the count to get to eight, then tears after Marquez. They brawl for much of the remaining round. Though Pinkney lasts to the bouts final bell, he catches hellacious straight right hands for much the rest of it.
Marquez says after the fight it was a good experience, going down, as he expected he would likely go down again at some point in his career. Boy would he. It’s a portentous harbinger of a legendary night in his future.
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Two fights later, Feb. 3, 1997: a gangly featherweight, Cedric Mingo, is tasked with facing the young technician for the vacant WBO NABO featherweight title, the first belt Marquez would attempt to gain. In the 4th round, a Marquez straight right hand wobbles the 5’9″ southpaw. The unusually aggressive Marquez is showing a new wrinkle, he is coming forward for much of the fight.
It?s the sort of bout where Marquez is winning each round, but moment to moment the fight is close. Normally, the sportsman, Marquez seems a little on edge. In round 7 there is a clash of heads and he refuses to touch gloves.
Mingo’s corner tells him after the round, “He’s beating the shit out of you with the right-hand. He?s fighting just like every other right-handed fighter fights a southpaw. That kid ain?t fit to carry your goddamn gym bag.”
While it may have been a competitive fight through eight rounds, Marquez picks it up in the 9th. By the stanza?s close, Mingo’s nose is broken and bleeding. In the corner, the doctor gives him one more round.
Valiant and desperate, Mingo heads out to the center of the ring for what would be his final chance. In the opening seconds he is hit with a blistering Marquez left-right combo that puts him down. He pops back up quickly, a gout of blood spurts from his nose. Though he makes it through to the round?s bell, it is stopped by the doctor as promised in the corner.
After the fight, revealing himself as a grand puppeteer, trainer Beristain reveals that Juan Manuel was not told he would be facing a southpaw. He had trained for a right-hander. This was even his first bout with a lefty.
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Five months later, Panamanian Catalino Becerra travels to the Great Western Forum in Inglewood California to fight in the States for the first time. Marquez?s brother Rafael, just seven fights into his stellar career, notches a 2nd round technical knockout on the undercard.
Older brother Juan Manuel?s more safety first approach and Becerra?s tentativeness lead to a slow first round as they feel each other out. The crowd begins to boo within the first 15 seconds.
Just before the end of round 1, Marquez lands two quick punches that catch his foe off balance and send him to the mat. Unhurt, Beccera gets up, the bell rings and he grins in the corner as his handlers berate him.
The action steadily picks up over the course of the next few rounds and in the 4th Beccera decides that boxing with this guy is like trying to bang with Joe Frazier. It?s not gonna work out. Boxing flies out the window and he begins to attack, catching Marquez off guard.
In the sudden ferocity they clash heads and Marquez is cut badly in the corner of his eye right eye. The round is fraught with drama; blood speckles the deck. The action stops and the doctor checks the eye. He gives the go ahead.
They trade shots for the rest of the round. They trade big shots, with each man getting stung. The fire that Marquez would display in his marquee fights against Pacquiao, Juan Diaz and Michael Katsidis, then in the distant future, flares up and we glimpse the same iron-willed mettle his more celebrated Mexican contemporaries Erik Morales and Marco Antonio Barrera emblazoned on the boxing conscious at the time.
In Round 5, Marquez re-establishes control of the pace and again manages to stagger Becerra near the end, but can?t put him away. The fight is exciting, eventful. Adding insult to eye injury, Becerra hits Marquez low and the referee takes a point away from him.
With electrifying suddenness in the 7th, Marquez throws a right uppercut, followed by a left uppercut and then a straight right which bends Becerra over backwards, Matrix-style, and to the mat in a tangle. Though he rises, his knees wobble and the the referee waves the fight to its conclusion, ending the tumultuous anything-could-happen affair.
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The next fight found a further continuation of Marquez?s maturation process, as he stepped in to face ?The Kid? Vincent Howard from Guyana. A tall lightweight at 5’9″ training out of Brooklyn, Howard has his moments in every round.
Early on, ?The Kid? complained of low blows that were actually on the belt, showing some frustration and complaining often. The Kid?s whining succeeds in making Marquez tentative to throw to the body and blunts some of his momentum.
In the 2nd round they throw right hooks at the same time, but the promising Mexican?s gets there first and Vincent crumbles to the mat. He would survive, but throughout the fight Marquez would land three and four punch combinations, twisting Howard’s head and showing the multi-punch mastery that he has since become revered for. Oft-times after these blows, Howard would raise his arms straight out as though on a crucifix, seemingly to say, “What more are you gonna to hit me with?”
Late in the fight Howard catches Marquez with a crisp uppercut that cranks his head to the side, his best punch of the fight. Marquez eats it up and comes back throwing a six- or seven-punch combo, landing most.
With desperation a seeming necessity, in the 11th hour, Howard comes out and stuns Marquez with a series of big blows, driving him back into the ropes with a volley of overhand right bombs. The future Hall of Famer immediately regroups, reconfigures and punishes Howard the rest of the round.
After this onslaught, they head into the final three minutes and Howard?s will has been broken. He disengages, and referee Mills Lane decides he’s had enough, ending the fiery Marquez combination exhibition. At the time Juan Manuel Marquez was ranked number six at lightweight in The Ring Magazine.
Marquez is a rising contender, still climbing up the ranks and fighting in the shadows of his more famous countrymen.
