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↵This past Saturday night saw what I think most fight fans will agree is now the reigning fight of the year favorite, Juan Manuel Marquez’s ninth-round stoppage of Juan Diaz for the unified lightweight title. ↵
↵And though there’s a lot of fighting left to do in 2009, something pretty special is going to have to come along to dethrone Marquez/Diaz as the likely FOY, because it was a smackdown of the highest order. You need only know that the HBO announcers were alluding to the lightweight donnybrook of the millennium -- Corrales/Castillo I -- as a reference point to know that this was indeed a wangdanger to the nth power of wang. ↵
↵↵It was also a showcase for one of the most exhilarating and most unappreciated fighters in the game right now -- Juan Manuel Marquez. Despite the fact that he registers about a 0.0 on the Q factor of mainstream sports awareness, by the consensus of most sweet scientists, Marquez is currently the No. 2 pound-for-pound boxer in the sport, coming in just a hair short of the reigning number one, Marquez’s much more famous nemesis, Manny Pacquiao. ↵
↵↵On Saturday night, Marquez actually made a strong case for taking over Pacquiao’s top spot, solving the riddle of the charging Baby Bull, Juan Diaz, in a taut and hyper-violent bloodfest that left both men seriously beaten, but only one man standing come the finish. Diaz had a significant size advantage over Marquez, who was fighting only his second fight at 135 after spending the majority of his career as a sub-130-pounder. Setting his customarily relentless pace, Diaz came on like a veritable lightweight Joe Frazier in the early rounds, punishing Marquez to the body and head with lunging left hooks while Marquez gamely returned fire and weathered the bigger man’s onslaught. ↵
↵↵With his combination of precision counter-punching and implacable cool under fire (think Daniel Zaragoza combined with Obama), Marquez made the necessary adjustments in the middle rounds to evade Diaz’s punishing left hooks while at the same time finding the angles he needed to stop the charging bull in his tracks with lightning-quick combinations. Come the seventh round or so, Marquez started to find an opening for a right uppercut that snapped sweat off Diaz’s head like a shower nozzle. In the eighth, he cut both of Diaz’s eyes severely, and in the ninth he finished the job, pulling out his muleta and slaying the wounded toro with the true matador’s pension for both ferocity and flair. ↵
↵↵It was Grade A maestro material, and it made it all the sadder when after the fight, Marquez revealed the depth of his delusion as to where he currently stands in the hierarchy of the boxing world. When asked by HBO announcer Max Kellerman what his plans were for his next bout, Marquez replied with a completely straight face, “Now I will fight Mayweather.” ↵
↵↵Kellerman couldn’t contain his disbelief. “What makes you think that Floyd Mayweather wants to fight you?” he asked. Marquez didn’t have a good answer for that one, saying only that because Pacquiao doesn’t want to fight him a third time, he will settle for Floyd. ↵
↵↵Boxing is such a tough hustle, man. On one hand, it’s easy to understand why Marquez operates under such grand delusions at the moment. After all, he’s arguably the best pound-for-pound boxer in the sport. ↵
↵↵Unfortunately, when it comes to the sordid vicissitudes of the fight game, being good, or even great, is only half the equation. While many mainstream sports fans know who Floyd Mayweather is, and are beginning to know who Manny Pacquiao is, none of them have any idea who Juan Manuel Marquez is. And until they do, Floyd certainly won’t fight him (I’d say Marquez is about 11th on the list of people Floyd would consider fighting right now -- I won’t bore you with the full list), nor will Pacquiao risk a third fight with him. ↵
↵↵Marquez’s virtuoso turn against Juan Diaz Saturday night illustrates perfectly the reason why. The guy is incredibly, jaw-droppingly awesome. And yet he’s such a non-player when it comes to drawing power that he was the B-side in this equation, fighting in Diaz’s hometown of Houston with Diaz serving as the star attraction. ↵
↵↵So who exactly wants to fight a fantastic fighter who can’t draw big money? The answer to that would be “nobody.” Nobody big, anyway. In other words, Juan Manuel, don’t wait by the phone for Floyd to get back to you on that challenge you put out there. Something tells me he won’t be calling. ↵
↵This post originally appeared on the Sporting Blog. For more, see The Sporting Blog Archives.