— I couldn’t make it to this show, but the best place in the world to see a fight is deep in the heart of Mexico. It’s like stepping into a time machine or traveling to another dimension where there’s no such thing as “politically correct.” It’s probably the only place in North America where you can still goose a ring card girl and not have a lawsuit handed to you by the third round. The chants of “Ole,” “Culero,” and the feeling that tremendous, ugly violence is brewing somewhere in the crowd beats the hell out of the sanitized Vegas environment where 75% of the “fans” don’t even show up for the undercard. I recommend all fight fans to come on down, at least once in their lifetime. I know it’s getting pretty crazy in Mexico, but fight fans are supposed to be macho, right?
— Roman “El Chocolatito” Gonzalez is one of the sport’s best offensive fighters. For anyone interested in airing a sure-fire Fight of the Year, Gonzalez vs. Giovani Segura would pretty much guarantee the honor. Chris Arreola vs. any chubby journeyman would do four-times the numbers, but Gonzalez-Segura would do wonders for some network’s karma when it comes to long-suffering hardcore boxing fans.
— Rafael Marquez is a shot fighter. Sadly, all the years of sacrifice and abuse have taken their toll. He may have stopped his opponent last night, but the guy’s legs aren’t under him anymore and his reflexes are significantly slower than even six months ago. Rafa is a dead man walking.
— Did Likar Ramos take a dive in his fight with Juan Manuel Marquez? Nothing can be proven, but to dismiss the possibility of dirty pool is the ultimate in denial. As someone who has seen uglier things happen in Mexican bull rings with just a couple of hundred bucks on the line, I definitely feel justified in thinking that Ramos could’ve been making like Greg Louganis last night.
It wouldn’t be the first time that a patsy was hired to lay down for the sake of preserving a big-money bout down the line. If you remember, it was reported that Marco Antonio Barrera’s tune-up for Amir Khan was held up when a proposed opponent walked away from the fight, claiming to the media that members of Team Barrera insisted he go down no later than the fourth round (hapless, 1-7-1, Freudis Rojas was then signed to the fight, but proceeded to butt Barrera, opening up a cut over his left eye).
Whether Ramos took a dive or not, we’ll never know. But what Marquez landed didn’t look like the kind of punch to send a fighter to Paul Williams land. Ramos had only been stopped one time in his career, and that was from Jorge Solis body shots. It just isn’t logical to assume that a fighter would opt out of the biggest fight of his career without sustaining any real damage and with a big payday ahead if he could even muster a solid, competitive performance. Fighters, even at the club-level, don’t think like that…unless an easy loss would play to their benefit in the long run. But, like I said, we’ll never know and it wasn’t like Ramos had a shot at beating Marquez. Bring on Pacquiao-Marquez III.
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