fight of the year (again)?

thats gonna leave a mark…

thank goodness for israel vasquez and rafael marquez.

last weekend i found myself quite down on boxing. i watched the replay of pavlik vs. taylor 2, and found that the contest wasn’t boring, but it certainly was not memorable. this replay was followed by the klitchko fight… and to say that the russian’s winning effort was pathetic and lackluster would be too kind. the heavyweight division is truly miserable.

with this malaise as a backdrop, tonight i watched israel vasquez and rafael marquez wage nuclear war on eachother’s faces in carson california. that fight was just about as exciting as boxing gets. both fighters were brutally battered, and their grills looked liked pulverized meat after the final bell sounded. both fighters scored knockdowns during the fight, and entering the 12th round most observers could have easily scored the fight for either combatant.

vasquez literally won in the waning seconds of the fight. by scoring a knockdown of his opponent as the final round was set to expire, israel scraped together enough points on the judges scorecards to eke out a 113-112 split decision. fights literally cannot get any closer than that. the ebb and flow was so great in this fight that before the knockdown occurred i would have been completely satisfied if the bout had been ruled a draw.

marquez vs vasquez was the tie-breaker fight in a trilogy. while all three of the matchups were classics, i’m not quite sure that this series should be considered the greatest trilogy in the history of the sport. thats a tough argument to make, especially considering the classic ali-frazier fights, and the recent gatti-ward / barrera-morales bloodbaths.

still, this trilogy belongs in the conversation with the best of all time. marquez & vasquez’s first two encounters in 2007 could both have been considered the fight of the year. the trilogy’s climax will absolutely be a contender for 2008′s honors, as well.

if you weren’t lucky enough to see the fight live, make it a point to watch the replay sometime soon. tremendous stuff, gentlemen. tonight was a good night to be a boxing fan.