VARGAS-MOSLEY POST-FIGHT ANALYSIS
February 26, 2006 - by Bert Sugar
In the star-spangled words of Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald, "There are no second acts in America." But then again, F. Scott was never known to have been a boxing fan. And couldn't have foreseen last Saturday night when both Sugar Shane Mosley and Fernando Vargas gave a star-studded performance that gave lie to the slander that there would be no second acts in their careers.
I heard Oscar and Bernard yelling at me to go after his left eye. I was trying with straight over the top right hands and them straight over the eye and it was swelling up. Fernando is a warrior.
- Shane Mosley
In the weeks leading up to the fight stories of a little white hue suggested that both fighters' careers were in irreversible decline. Writing off both in almost a tombstone and local-papers-please-carry fashion, those in the writing dodge had it that Vargas's troubles with his weight and his motivation as well as the effects of his two brutal loses to Trinidad and De La Hoya had put his once-promising career into almost permanent decline. Mosley, on the other glove, was thought to have shown diminishing skill as he moved northward from his 135-pound mooring where, as a lightweight, he had been 32-0 with 30 KO's, and now looked pedestrian, at best, as a welterweight and junior middle. With the word "crossroads" an overused cliché, only silent heresies of reason would have you believe that these two once-elite fighters could stuff the toothpaste back into the tube and regenerate their careers with a second act.
But there were a few, like HBO's Larry Merchant, who thought differently. Acknowledging that there was a little water in their once fine wine, Merchant still believed that the two possessed enough to put on a potentially great fight and cited Sugar Ray Robinson and Carmen Basillio, who, even in the twilights of their great careers, staged back-to-back "Fights of the Year."
And so it was that Saturday night, with no more rent to pay, no Sunday to rest and no more tomorrows, the two, knowing that the deficiencies of the day would never be supplied by the morrow, put on one helluva fight.
With 7,000-plus in the Mandalay Bay arena, attracted more by the force of the two combatants' reputations than their rumored skills, Mosley came out at the git-go, setting the pace. His quick punches, although not delivered with the lightning quickness of the Mosley of old, still possessed thunder as they thundered off the brow of the incoming Vargas, raising a slight welt under his left eye by the end of the first round.
|
| FIGHTERS |
Mosley |
Vargas |
| TOTAL PUNCHES |
| Thrown |
498 |
429 |
| Connected |
147 |
139 |
| % |
30% |
32% |
| JABS |
| Thrown |
195 |
88 |
| Connected |
20 |
25 |
| % |
10% |
28% |
| POWER PUNCHES |
| Thrown |
303 |
341 |
| Connected |
127 |
114 |
| % |
42% |
33% |
| JUDGES SCORECARDS |
| Paul Smith |
86 |
85 |
| Chuck Giampa |
86 |
85 |
| Patricia Morse Jarman |
85 |
86 |
As Vargas's eye began to shutter, both promoter Oscar De La Hoya and former middleweight champion Bernard Hopkins, seated side-by-side at ringside, hollered up at Mosley, "The eye…the eye." And in response Mosley concentrated his attack on the injured orb, threading a needle's eye with his right to Vargas's left.
Although Vargas was scoring, and scoring heavily, to the body and the head of Mosley--so much so that at the end of the ninth, two judges had Mosley ahead by one point, the other Vargas ahead by one-the story of the fight was the story of Vargas's left eye, his powers now barely those of sight, unable to see Mosley's incoming right.
Still, even though it seemed at this point as if the only thing that could save Vargas was a seeing-eye dog, the man called "The Aztec Warrior" lived up to his billing, soldiering on, trying against all odds to carry the fight to Mosley, sight a survivor sport. But after one bodacious right hand from Mosley to this fighting Cyclops, referee Joe Cortez had had enough even if Vargas hadn't and waved the fight over at 1:22 of the tenth.
While the spoils belonged to Mosley with his win, the glory belonged to both as they put on what, even at this early calendar count of the year is a prime candidate for "Fight of the Year." And proof positive that two great fighters can stage a "second act." Is it too much to hope for that a star-spangled third act might be somewhere in the future?
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