His nickname belongs in some old movie about the Al Capone-era of gangsters. These days, it also is about as misleading. Marco Antonio Barrera was called the “Baby-Faced Assassin” several scars ago. The baby, if ever there, is long gone. So, too, perhaps is the assassin, although Barrera might argue that one.
It’s the face that has been around with remarkable resiliency. Julio Cesar Chavez still is – and probably always will be – Mexico’s battered legend. For a while, Erik Morales was its heart. Jorge Arce is its showman.
But Barrera is the modern face to an evolving Mexican game for reasons that often go unnoticed or unappreciated. Barrera is a featherweight who has gone from brawler to tactician and from the edge of a career-ending loss to a poised comeback.
Through 67 fights, Barrera (63-4, 42 knockouts) has been a thinking man’s fighter – smart enough to change and stubborn enough not to let public expectations force him into something stupid.
Barrera’s fight Saturday night against Juan Manuel Marquez (46-3-1, 35 KOs) at Las Vegas’ Mandalay Bay is an intriguing confrontation.
Marquez’s instincts have been forged in a Barrera-like way by an iron-willed trainer, Nacho Beristain.
As a result, there is a sense that, maybe, this is the end of the line for Barrera, a fighter who might be the finest in Mexico’s great ring tradition.
Filipino Manny Pacquiao blew away Barrera in an 11th-round technical knockout in 2003. Marquez fought Pacquiao to a draw in 2004. End of argument? It’s a noisy business, but the quiet Barrera, who says he once aspired to be lawyer, seems to want the last word as much as anybody.
He is remembered for his trilogy with Morales. Yet his finest moment might have been in 2001 against Naseem Hamed. Barrera stood in the middle of the ring, impassively and stoically, as Hamed, the so-called Prince, kept him waiting. After Hamed finally made a circus-like ring entrance, Barrera broke him down and exposed him as mere media hype through 12 deliberate rounds that were as brilliant as they were brutal. Nobody hears from Hamed anymore. He is finished, simply because it never seems as if the resourceful Barrera ever is.
Phoenix heavyweight George Garcia (13-0, 4 KOs) has landed a date on Showtime and will face Travis Walker (22-0-1, 17 KOs) of Tallahassee, Fla., on April 6 in Minneapolis Walker is coming off a victory against 2004 Olympian Jason Estrada.
• Pacquiao is supposed to be a Filipino icon, yet he was booed in his home country. Then again, most politicians are jeered. Pacquiao has announced that he intends to run for office, which might set him up for a couple of losses – at the ballot box and in the ring April 14 against Jorge Solis.
• It took Wladimir Klitschko four minutes and 27 seconds to beat Ray Austin for a second-round stoppage Saturday in Germany. It took Sultan Ibragimov 46 seconds to beat Javier Mora on Saturday for a first-round stoppage in New York. That amounts to more than five minutes, or way too much of today’s heavyweights.
