Marco Antonio Barrera doesn’t need Juan Manuel Marquez. He doesn’t need this fight that the sport’s most diehard fans are salivating over.
World-class boxers in the featherweight and junior lightweight divisions need a fight with Marquez like you need a massive case of Irritable Bowel Syndrome.
Barrera’s not dumb – he’s actually one of the smarter prize fighters to come around in the past 25 years – so he knows what a tough fight he will have with his fellow Mexico City native; just like he knows that he didn’t have to accept this bout, which will be fought for his WBC 130-pound title this Saturday at the Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas (and broadcast live on HBO Pay-Per-View).
Barrera beat ’88 Olympic champ and former world titlist Kennedy McKinney in a classic war that helped to launch HBO’s ‘Boxing After Dark’ series 11 years ago. He engaged in an all-time great trilogy with Erik Morales, and got the better of his arch rival in the breath-taking series that was waged over three weight classes. He undressed the previously undefeated and highly regarded Naseem Hamed in one of the most complete boxing clinics ever conducted on the world’s stage.
He’s defeated 14 former, current or future world title holders during his 17-year, 67-bout pro career, including Kevin Kelly, Paulie Ayala and Johnny Tapia.
Who’s Juan Manuel Marquez?
If any active fighter in the 126- or 130-pound weight classes can be excused for asking that question, it is Barrera.
But here’s the deal: Barrera knows who Marquez is, and for better or worse, he made the decision to face Marquez before he ends his certain hall-of-fame career even though he knows that he would have received a free pass from the media and from the fans had he pretended that Marquez, who recently joined his promotional company Golden Boy Promotions, did not exist.
“A victory over Marquez will not bring any more significance to my legacy that it doesn’t already have,” Barrera told the media at a press luncheon held at El Paseo Inn in Los Angeles Monday afternoon. “This fight won’t make or break me.”
Most knowledgeable observers of the sport would agree with that statement. So if that’s the case, then why did he take the fight? Why is Barrera risking a loss at this stage of his career when a rematch with Manny Pacquiao, the last fighter to beat him (and the only fighter to DECISIVELY best Barrera in past 11 years), could be made this year and not only provide a record payday but the opportunity to avenge his one-sided 2003 loss to the Filipino icon?
“Because,” Barrera says calmly, “Pacquiao was not available due to legal problems, and this [bout with Marquez] is a great fight.”
Barrera put extra emphasis on the word “fight” because he admits that he isn’t sure if the composed stick-and-move strategy that he employed to great effect against Hamed back in 2001, and has used to control many world-class opponents since then (including Enrique Sanchez, Robbie Peden and Rocky Juarez in their recent rematch), will work against a fighter as talented and complete as Marquez.
Having come up through the ranks with Marquez in the mid-to-late ‘90s, back when both were promoted by Southern California-based Forum Boxing, Inc., Barrera is very familiar with his March 17th foe.
Back then Barrera was a relentless 122-pound titlist who drew comparisons to Julio Cesar Chavez, while Marquez was a featherweight prospect so technically sharp that he reminded fans of Salvador Sanchez.
From ’95 to ’99, the two Mexico City fighters alternately headlined dozens of Forum Boxing cards at the Great Western Forum in Inglewood, California, the Arrowhead Pond in Anaheim, and the Tropicana in Las Vegas.
When Barrera wasn’t the headliner he was often able to observe from ringside the steely focus, technical proficiency and deadly accurate combinations that Marquez became known for among hardcore fans by the late ‘90s.
“Of course, I knew of him back then,” said Barrera, reminding the press that he’s also a fight fan. “I watched him fight and followed his career as any good countryman would his fellow Mexican.
“He’s a top-level fighter; very good at counter punching, with a tight defense. I know I’m fighting the best and that’s why I’ve worked so hard in camp.”
For this fight, Barrera lived and trained in Big Bear Lake, California, a mountain resort town 100 miles northeast of Los Angeles and more than 7,000 feet above sea level, for two months.
Team Barrera – which basically consists of Barrera, longtime trainer Rudy Perez, co-trainer Sendai Tanaka, advisor Roberto Diaz, his father Jorge Sr. and his brother Jorge Jr. – made the house and home gym of Barrera’s GBP partner Shane Mosley its base of operations, where a talented and experienced group of sparring partners were assembled to help prepare him for Marquez.
Former WBC featherweight title holders, veteran Guty Espadas Jr. and 23-year-old Rodolfo Lopez (both of whom were once trained by Marquez’s respected coach, Nacho Beristain), joined Japan’s 130-pound champ Yusuke Kobori (a 19-2-1 fighter from Tokyo with a no. 10 ranking in the WBC) and undefeated (14-0) lightweight prospect Brandon Rios to make up the bulk of Barrera’s sparring.
All were expected to bring the high-held left handed counter-punching style that Marquez is known for into their reportedly lively sparring sessions with Barrera, who admits that the style gave him trouble.
“We tried to learn [Marquez’s style] in camp,” he said. “I tried to box against my sparring partners and I really couldn’t do it. I couldn’t learn it, so we’ll have to go back to being the old Barrera for this fight. I can’t bring the new Barrera to beat him. I’m going to have to fight him.”
Fighting Marquez generally doesn’t work very well. Fighters who have given him fits in the past were slick and crafty boxers like ’92 Olympian Julian Wheeler (one of Marquez’s early opponents who was leading on the scorecards before he basically quit in the 10th and final round of their bout) and former WBA featherweight titlist Freddie Norwood, who staled and stuck and moved his way to a forgettable decision victory eight years ago.
Tough guys who tried to stand and trade with Marquez, like Australia’s Robbie Peden, Mexico’s Marcos Licona and more recently Thailand’s Terdsak Jandaeng and the Philippines’ Jimrez Jaca, were systematically broken down by the late rounds of those nationally televised (on HBO and Showtime) bouts, often in brutal, bloody fashion.
However, the prime example of Marquez’s mastery over an aggressive, come-forward warrior is his 2004 classic confrontation with Manny Pacquiao – the quintessential boxing badass. The Filipino firebrand, who was fresh off his 11-round domination of Barrera, nearly Blitzkrieged Marquez in the opening round of their bout, dropping the counter puncher three times with blistering left hands.
Marquez, whose badly bloodied nose was smashed flat and probably broken, got up from each knockdown and then proceeded to coolly dissect Pacquiao over the next 11 rounds the way he had 42 previous opponents. Marquez’s tenacity and technical superiority was enough to earn him a controversial split-draw and win him new fans.
Barrera, one of the old fans, was more than impressed with Marquez’s performance. He was proud of it.
“I applauded that fight,” Barrera said. “I was cheering [during] that fight. It showed the world what Mexican fighters are supposed to be, what Mexican fighters are all about.”
What are Mexican fighters all about?
“Never giving up and never backing down from a challenge,” Barrera says.
And that’s why Saturday’s excellent matchup is taking place, but why did it take so long for this fight to happen? Both Barrera and Marquez, a veteran of 50 pro fights, are 33 years old. Shouldn’t this showdown have happened sometime when both men were in their 20s?
“I really don’t know why the fight never happened when we were younger and fighting for the Forum,” Barrera said. “This fight was never offered to me [before now]. Maybe it was because we had the same promoter, I don’t know.”
Barrera is not dumb, but he obviously knows how to play dumb. The Marquez fight was there for him, but A) Forum Boxing probably did want to protect their cash cow (him) for as long as possible and B) Barrera’s former manager, the shrewd and very influential (at the time) Ricardo Maldonado, would not hear of a matchup between his star fighter and Marquez.
Maldonado was just doing what he thought was right for his fighter.
However, what Maldonado thought was best for his fighter was not necessarily what was good for fight fans.
Eric Gomez, matchmaker for Golden Boy Promotions, is proud that his company was able to make the fight that Mexican fans and diehard observers had dreamt about for more than 10 years. He’s also proud of Barrera and Marquez.
“This is what separates boxing from other sports,” Gomez told the press at Monday’s press conference before he introduced Marquez and Barrera. “When you watch the [NBA] finals in basketball or the Super Bowl or the World Series, the best two teams are always facing each other.”
Not so in boxing, Gomez added, telling the media something they know all too well. The two top fighters in a particular division facing off in the ring just doesn’t happen with the regularity that it once did, which is probably one of the many reasons why boxing now takes a back seat to not only football, basketball, and baseball, but golf and tennis, and also the UFC and various ‘X-Games’-type sports.
“Even if the two best fighters are from the same city [they often don’t fight],” Gomez said. “Marco desperately wanted a rematch with Manny Pacquiao this year because he’s thinking of retiring soon. For whatever reason we couldn’t make it happen, so he told us, ‘OK, give me the next toughest guy, the next biggest name who will fight me’. That fighter was Juan Manuel Marquez, who immediately accepted the fight.
“That shows the commitment these two have to the sport.”
It’s no surprise that Marquez, who missed out on numerous big fight opportunities over the past eight years for a variety of reasons but mainly because the other elite fighters didn’t want to face him, however, for Barrera to take this bout so readily, is well, refreshing.
“I know [Marquez] is a fighter that nobody wanted to fight, that a lot of people turned their backs on,” Barrera said when asked why he was so quick to make the fight. “But he’s very good, and I want to demonstrate that Marco Antonio Barrera is here to give fans big fights against top-level fighters.”
He admits that his imminent retirement had much to do with his decision.
“I’ve been thinking about it for the last three years,” he said. “It’s kept me up at night. My family told me to go ahead and hang them up, but I wanted to have a few more big fights before I left the sport. This will be my last year. I will not be the typical fighter who announces his retirement and then fights again. When I’m done, I’m done.”
So Barrera intends to make his last year in the sport count for something.
Because of this mentality, regardless if he wins or loses Saturday night, regardless if the Marquez bout is his last fight, and regardless if he ever gets the chance to even the score with Pacquiao, Barrera is guaranteed to leave boxing as a champ – a real champ, which all he ever wanted from the sport to begin with.
“I’ve accomplished a lot in boxing,” Barrera said, “much more than I thought I ever would. All I ever wanted was to be a champion. I became a champion in three divisions. I have been very successful, very fortunate.
“Boxing has been good to me.”
By facing Marquez, Barrera is being good to boxing.
