Jim
11-23-2007, 04:43 PM
By Graham Houston
A meeting of colourful crowd-pleasers is always going to interest fight fans, especially when the result is in doubt. Thus Friday’s main event between Fernando Vargas and Ricardo Mayorga on Showtime PPV from the Staples Centre, Los Angeles, looks like being a big winner for co-promoters Main Events and Don King Productions.
The scheduled 12-rounder, made at a catchweight of 166 pounds to suit Vargas, is for the vacant WBC Continental Americas super middleweight title simply because promoters and TV networks these days feel that every top-of-the-bill bout must be for some sort of championship. This fight stands up very well on its own merits.
True, Vargas has seen better days as a fighter — he says this will be his final fight — and Mayorga seems a faded force, but we have two fiery personalities here and both went into trash-talk overdrive as the bout drew nearer.
Do Fernando and Ricardo really hate each other? Probably not. Mayorga knows how to sell a fight and he likes to try to get under an opponent’s skin. Vargas will always give as good as he gets when taunts are exchanged. Yet whether the animosity is genuine or manufactured, it has provided lurid quotes and lively moments in the big-fight build-up, with a scuffle at the initial press conference and the fighters shouting and gesturing at each other while separated by a plexiglass screen at the last such get-together.
If the fight lives up to all the fun and furore that has preceded it then we are in for a wild affair.
Vargas, who turns 30 next month, was last seen getting flattened in the sixth round by Shane Mosley in a light-middleweight bout 16 months ago. In Mayorga’s last appearance, 18 months ago, the Nicaraguan was blown out in the sixth by Oscar De La Hoya — also at 154 pounds.
Neither of the last-fight losers is what he once was, but put them together and you have a strangely intriguing fight — and one that people want to see.
Even though Mayorga is four years older than Vargas he might actually be the fresher of the two fighters. Vargas has been knocked out in devastating fashion three times — by Tito Trinidad, De La Hoya and Mosley. He has had problems with his back, and his tendency to put on massive amounts of weight between fights is well known. His body has been through a lot of wear and tear.
It is true that Mayorga took a lot of punches from Trinidad, and he was knocked down three times by De La Hoya, but otherwise he has not been badly banged around: in all his other fights the tough slugger has been able to walk through his opponent’s blows.
The two-month postponement of this fight from its original date will have been greatly beneficial to Vargas from the weight-making perspective. Also, it seems to me that when a fight is postponed it is always more of a psychological setback for the fighter who did not cause the postponement.
Nevertheless, Mayorga seems to have trained well for this fight in Miami before heading to L.A. The trainer Orlando Cuellar, who helped with Mayorga’s preparation, said over the phone from Miami this week: “I assisted his longtime trainer Luis Leon. I think Ricardo is very focused, very determined and in excellent shape. He really believes this is a winnable fight for him. When the fight was postponed I believe Ricardo stayed in very good shape. He’s done about 100 rounds of pad work, probably 80 to 100 rounds of sparring and he’s in rare form. I believe he stands a very good chance of winning this fight, but this is probably going to be a heated toe-to-toe battle and in a shootout anyone can get caught.”
In the boxing industry, people are not so much divided this time as not knowing quite what to expect.
I am not so sure this will be an instant punch-for-punch war. Vargas is clearly the better boxer technically, and he can win rounds just by using the jab. He has reunited with his original trainer — and father figure — Eduardo Garcia, and I believe that Senor Garcia will want Vargas to box a smart, disciplined fight. The question is, after inactivity and coming down in weight from more than 200 pounds, will Vargas be able to keep boxing, moving and countering for 12 rounds?
Mayorga will do what he always does: he will come forward and seek to bully and batter Vargas, taking punches to give his own.
The Vargas of the Yory Boy Campas and Ike Quartey fights would probably outclass Mayorga and hammer him with counter punches, but those days have long gone.
My feeling is that Vargas will quite likely start out boxing but end up fighting — I could be wrong but I just do not think, at this stage of his career, that he has the mobility, nor, perhaps, the legs, to box the sort of fight that would serve him best.
Vargas is likely to win the early rounds — as he says, he is the smarter, superior fighter — but eventually, I think, he will increasingly find himself standing in front of Mayorga, when he will likely be doing damage but also getting hit himself.
In a boxing match, Vargas has too much for Mayorga, but in an attrition type of fight, either man is capable of winning.
How much Vargas has left, and how much he has been affected by losing weight, could decide the issue — but no one can be sure about these things until the fight gets under way.
My guess is that Vargas’s better boxing and his jab can get him through, perhaps with a stoppage win around the 10th round against an easy-to-hit opponent, but there are more than the usual amount of intangibles surrounding this fight and in my mind's eye I can just as easily see Mayorga landing a heavy right hand. So, no definitive pick, just a slight lean towards Vargas.
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This is guaranteed to be a slugfest and someone's getting KTFO.
Im pulling for Vargas but its hard to pick a winner in this one.
I think the fans will be the winners,this will b fireworks between 2 heavy punchers who dont like each other.
A meeting of colourful crowd-pleasers is always going to interest fight fans, especially when the result is in doubt. Thus Friday’s main event between Fernando Vargas and Ricardo Mayorga on Showtime PPV from the Staples Centre, Los Angeles, looks like being a big winner for co-promoters Main Events and Don King Productions.
The scheduled 12-rounder, made at a catchweight of 166 pounds to suit Vargas, is for the vacant WBC Continental Americas super middleweight title simply because promoters and TV networks these days feel that every top-of-the-bill bout must be for some sort of championship. This fight stands up very well on its own merits.
True, Vargas has seen better days as a fighter — he says this will be his final fight — and Mayorga seems a faded force, but we have two fiery personalities here and both went into trash-talk overdrive as the bout drew nearer.
Do Fernando and Ricardo really hate each other? Probably not. Mayorga knows how to sell a fight and he likes to try to get under an opponent’s skin. Vargas will always give as good as he gets when taunts are exchanged. Yet whether the animosity is genuine or manufactured, it has provided lurid quotes and lively moments in the big-fight build-up, with a scuffle at the initial press conference and the fighters shouting and gesturing at each other while separated by a plexiglass screen at the last such get-together.
If the fight lives up to all the fun and furore that has preceded it then we are in for a wild affair.
Vargas, who turns 30 next month, was last seen getting flattened in the sixth round by Shane Mosley in a light-middleweight bout 16 months ago. In Mayorga’s last appearance, 18 months ago, the Nicaraguan was blown out in the sixth by Oscar De La Hoya — also at 154 pounds.
Neither of the last-fight losers is what he once was, but put them together and you have a strangely intriguing fight — and one that people want to see.
Even though Mayorga is four years older than Vargas he might actually be the fresher of the two fighters. Vargas has been knocked out in devastating fashion three times — by Tito Trinidad, De La Hoya and Mosley. He has had problems with his back, and his tendency to put on massive amounts of weight between fights is well known. His body has been through a lot of wear and tear.
It is true that Mayorga took a lot of punches from Trinidad, and he was knocked down three times by De La Hoya, but otherwise he has not been badly banged around: in all his other fights the tough slugger has been able to walk through his opponent’s blows.
The two-month postponement of this fight from its original date will have been greatly beneficial to Vargas from the weight-making perspective. Also, it seems to me that when a fight is postponed it is always more of a psychological setback for the fighter who did not cause the postponement.
Nevertheless, Mayorga seems to have trained well for this fight in Miami before heading to L.A. The trainer Orlando Cuellar, who helped with Mayorga’s preparation, said over the phone from Miami this week: “I assisted his longtime trainer Luis Leon. I think Ricardo is very focused, very determined and in excellent shape. He really believes this is a winnable fight for him. When the fight was postponed I believe Ricardo stayed in very good shape. He’s done about 100 rounds of pad work, probably 80 to 100 rounds of sparring and he’s in rare form. I believe he stands a very good chance of winning this fight, but this is probably going to be a heated toe-to-toe battle and in a shootout anyone can get caught.”
In the boxing industry, people are not so much divided this time as not knowing quite what to expect.
I am not so sure this will be an instant punch-for-punch war. Vargas is clearly the better boxer technically, and he can win rounds just by using the jab. He has reunited with his original trainer — and father figure — Eduardo Garcia, and I believe that Senor Garcia will want Vargas to box a smart, disciplined fight. The question is, after inactivity and coming down in weight from more than 200 pounds, will Vargas be able to keep boxing, moving and countering for 12 rounds?
Mayorga will do what he always does: he will come forward and seek to bully and batter Vargas, taking punches to give his own.
The Vargas of the Yory Boy Campas and Ike Quartey fights would probably outclass Mayorga and hammer him with counter punches, but those days have long gone.
My feeling is that Vargas will quite likely start out boxing but end up fighting — I could be wrong but I just do not think, at this stage of his career, that he has the mobility, nor, perhaps, the legs, to box the sort of fight that would serve him best.
Vargas is likely to win the early rounds — as he says, he is the smarter, superior fighter — but eventually, I think, he will increasingly find himself standing in front of Mayorga, when he will likely be doing damage but also getting hit himself.
In a boxing match, Vargas has too much for Mayorga, but in an attrition type of fight, either man is capable of winning.
How much Vargas has left, and how much he has been affected by losing weight, could decide the issue — but no one can be sure about these things until the fight gets under way.
My guess is that Vargas’s better boxing and his jab can get him through, perhaps with a stoppage win around the 10th round against an easy-to-hit opponent, but there are more than the usual amount of intangibles surrounding this fight and in my mind's eye I can just as easily see Mayorga landing a heavy right hand. So, no definitive pick, just a slight lean towards Vargas.
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This is guaranteed to be a slugfest and someone's getting KTFO.
Im pulling for Vargas but its hard to pick a winner in this one.
I think the fans will be the winners,this will b fireworks between 2 heavy punchers who dont like each other.