After her hard-fought 10-round title defense in Argentina against hometown girl Yesica Marcos, Ana “The Hurricane” Julaton took a much-needed sabbatical of sorts, to clear her head, and just allow everything to sink in.
As soon as she was ready to talk, Julaton spoke to this scribe to personally address what had happened in Argentina amidst all the controversy that surrounded it.
Julaton was in good spirits, and unlike her previous four wins wherein she sustained cuts, and a bruised eye, the Daly City native was unmarked this time around. “I feel great. My promoter Allan Tremblay wanted me to take a few days off to just get away from it all, but I feel good” an upbeat Julaton told me exactly a week after her fight, and added, “I actually went to the gym the other day to work out a little bit.”
(CLICK HERE to view Arianny’s photos in Manila)
On the controversies that surround her title defense in Argentina, Julaton fired shots at the WBO, whom she claims forced her into going to Marcos’ turf for the fight.
“The WBO were doing a lot of political things to strip me off my belt, and they were trying to lobby me into a position that my only choice was to go to Argentina fight Yesica Marcos in her own hometown, or my title was going to get stripped,” Julaton told me when I asked her why she had to travel to her opponent’s territory despite being the champion.
“When we were over there in Argentina, one of the team members of Yesica Marcos actually admitted that he was surprised that we actually took the fight,” Julaton added.
Instead of complaining and crying, Julaton opted to simply rise above the adversity and take on the challenge, if it meant giving women’s boxing an opportunity to be on the forefront anew.
“I don’t want to go out and complain. I knew exactly what I was getting myself into with this fight,” Julaton said. “They wanted to go do all that extra work just to strip me off my title, go ahead and keep your stupid title. It’s not worth it to pay the extra tuition, and the extra fees for the sanctioning bodies and stuff like that. There’s a lot of opportunites to work with other organizations, but going through this camp, and going into the fight, the only chance I had (to win) was to stop her. I kind of went away from my regular style which was sticking and moving, because I knew it wasn’t going to get rewarded in Argentina. I knew I had to do something dramatic,” she added.
And dramatic she was, as Julaton, who only has one knockout win under her resume, dropped Marcos in the the second round with a perfectly placed left hook. But just as her gameplan was coming together, which was to test Marcos’ core by digging to the body and take her to deep waters in the championship rounds, the referee started controlling the fight by penalizing Julaton for her body shots. In the fifth round, Julaton was deducted a point for a borderline body punch, which changed the complexion of the fight entirely.
Instead of continuing what she had been doing, Julaton abandoned her body punches after repeated warnings from the referee, who was being yelled at by Marcos’ corner to watch the body shots, in fear of getting disqualified.
“I wanted to make sure I was able to stay in the pocket, and just plant my stance and just keep working the body over and over and over. We felt that we were succeeding, especially during rounds four and five, and when I had that point deducted, man I just couldn’t believe it. I remember vividly when the referee game that point deduction, I just stood there and I looked him straight in the eye and I said ‘Really?!’ I was there thinking, it couldn’t have been a low blow, because this is what I’ve been practicing,” an exasperated Julaton recounted to me.
“You know what, they took away everything from me. I knew if I stood there boxing, they wouldn’t reward me anyway. Even if I made her miss miles, and miles away, I wouldn’t be rewarded for it,” she continued.
And she was right.
By the judges’ scorecards, Julaton did practically nothing and just stood there as Marcos’ punching bag, with their lopsided scores. In my eyes, there were at least three rounds wherein Julaton clearly won, especially in the latter rounds when Marcos seemed as if she had lost steam. To think this was a fight where Julaton scored a knockdown, the scores were 98-91, and 98-92 twice. I scored the fight 94-93 for Marcos. (Click here for my round-by-round breakdown of this fight + the fight video)
Julaton wasn’t at all down about the loss, and was actually complimentary of Marcos, whom she says is a deserving champion. She wasn’t crying about a robbery either, it was simply the way she was treated unfairly which disgusts her, and hopes she could fight Marcos again in a rematch under more neutral terms.
