| WAR JMM! |
[Nov. 11th, 2011|01:42 pm] |
He's old. He's balding. He drinks his own piss. But there, the similarities with my good self end, because umpteen-time, three-weight world champion, Juan Manuel Márquez has served boxing dutifully for years, covering himself in glory (&, possibly, urine) whilst seeing off an improbable list of the world's best feather/lightweights.
At a time in life when most lower weight champs are taking beatings & racking up "RTD by" losses, Márquez has been savaging much younger blokes & collecting titles. An ill-advised step up against Pretty Boy Floyd aside (JMM's never looked good chasing down boxers), his only loss in about a thousand years is versus Pacquiao at super-feather, & before that the controversy-tinged fight with Chris John (which I've never been able to stay awake long enough to score).
Now, comes the final challenge. After their last encounter, you couldn't split PacMan & JMM with a micrometer. They hammered each other to an almost complete standstill, Pac-Man's early against-the-run-of-play knockdown & sledgehammer left hand in the tenth eking out a razor-thin victory of one point on the collected judge's cards. &, in the manner of those who bleat about the point-scoring in the first round of the first fight, the judge who made Pac the winner the second time gave the last round of the second fight to PacMan, who spent three minutes walking on to straight right hands & looking confused. Ho-hum.
This followed an 8th round where JMM's bodyshots seemed to be about to make him cry & indeed the second, where a 1-2-3 had Manny's legs doing a funny little dance the likes of which I have never seen anyone else come close to making him do.
However, since then Pac's looked, if you'll excuse the hyperbole, like a different fighter. Perhaps because he's fighting bigger dudes whose feet are encased in concrete, ever since this fight he's looked like greased lightning with a side order of nuclear devastation, against DLH, Cotto, Margarito, Hatton, Mosley, Clottey & Diaz. Two of those he's blasted clean out, two of those he's battered into submission. The rest he's zoomed around beating up like a mustachioed blur. He's appeared more versatile, more adaptable, more like someone's replaced his reflexes & nervous system with that formerly belonging to some sort of robot squirrel ninja.
He is the deserved favourite, as JMM has been eating left hands by guys who'd struggle to hit Manny with a handful of gravel. More & more Marquez has been punished & pushed to the wall, more & more he's had to grind out results using physical strength & will, as the timing fades & the combinations do not flow so freely. Never perfect in defence, JMM seems to now take heavy shots early as he gets warmed up; he tries to parry or slip, but there's a nanosecond between concept & execution, & he gets nailed so clean. Márquez has slowed so much that during the last few rounds of his points win over Diaz (in the rematch), even though his opponent wasn't putting on any pressure, his legs had that unsteady look of a guy who has gone to the well one too many times.
So, realistically even I cannot make a case for him. Despite his obsession with Manny (almost comically Herzog-like; in fact if Klaus Kinski wasn't dead & blond & German then I think he'd be ideal to play JMM in the man's biopic), I think the flesh is going to be too weak for him to get anything other than a career-high payday. He'll probably rattle Manny's cage again once or twice, but the shots that he recovered from & the danger he fought through four (& indeed seven) years ago will this time be too much, & the inexorable PacMan will move on.
But, one last time, I pay tribute to my favourite counter-punching Mexican, Juan Manuel Márquez: the man, the skills, the heart & the intricate facial hair.
Reasons to love JMM (by Me, 32 2/3):
1) Ever seen anyone make Manny's legs go like this? No. Didn't think so.
2) Textbook punching. Literally, like a demonstration of balance & poise. He looks like someone showing you how to fight:
3) Nuts as big as beach balls. He's actually been decked a shedload, to my knowledge (3 x in the first PacMan fight, once in the second, once against Katsidis, once against Floyd, twice against Norwood, once against Barrera (not counted)), but no-one calls uses him as an example of a shaky chin. Why? The Larry Holmes defence: if you deck me & I get up & beat the shite out of you, my own vulnerability proves I am actually harder than you are. So there.
4) Richard "The Secret" Williams.
5) An underrated, cruel puncher who gets every ounce of bodyweight & torque on his shots. He has no "tell" for the left hook to the ribs, dropping his bodyweight & swivelling over the lead heel with no set-up movement needed to generate power. In layman's terms, this means he brings bodyshots out when you are least expecting it, slamming into your unprepared ribs when you least expect it. No-one else has stopped Joel Casamayor, fer instance. & as I said above, no-one else has made Manny's legs do a little dance.
6) He has vile taste in blazers:
7) The most inventive combinations this side of an Enigma code-breaking machine. I mean, seriously. Watch this
8) There is not an ounce of give in the man. He never holds, he never runs, he never gets the earmuffs on with his gloves glued to the side of his head & waits for the storm to abate; he just wants to hurt you back, as soon as possible.
9) Got to admire a dreamer, who despite events wrecking his plans again & again, just keeps on keeping on, denying consensus reality, borne along on a tide of hubris! Right? Right...?
So, there you have it. I acknowledge reality & the transience of our glory days, but I shall be wearing a sombrero (possibly), waving a rainbow flag & screaming "VIVA MEXICO!" in the early hours of Sunday morning. & when I've finished doing that, I'm gonna watch my favourite fighter, maybe for the last time.
WAR JMM! |
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