Fernando Vargas has, by his own admission, accomplished everything he ever wanted to in boxing. That’s why he should take the postponement of his fight against Ricardo Mayorga that was scheduled for Sept. 8 in Los Angeles as a sign that now would be the best time to ride off into the sunset.
Promoters are working feverishly to come up with another date. But Vargas, who is suffering from severe anemia, ought to tell them that he is done, that he won’t be doing the Mayorga fight, which was to be his swan song.
It is the opinion here that Vargas, 29, is tempting fate and putting himself in danger of getting seriously hurt, or worse. But that’s Vargas, one of the most courageous fighters to come along in decades. In the sixth defense of his junior middleweight belt, Vargas suffered a vicious beating at the hands of Felix Trinidad Jr., who stopped Vargas in the 12th round in December 2000. That Vargas was still around to be knocked down for the third, fourth and fifth times in the 12th round was in itself a show of rare mettle.
Undaunted, Vargas came back two fights later and again became a junior middleweight champion when he knocked out Jose “Shibata” Flores in the seventh round in September 2001. But Vargas then took another harsh beatdown at the hands of his hated rival, Oscar De La Hoya, who knocked out Vargas in the 11th round in September 2002. By this time, one had to wonder just how much Vargas’ brain had been scrambled.
Vargas did win his next four fights, but they were against Fitz Vanderpool, Tony Marshall, Raymond Joval and Javier Castillejo. None of them had tremendous punching power.
Thus, when Vargas was then stopped by “Sugar” Shane Mosley in back-to-back fights in 2006, that was the clincher in the mind of this reporter. Prior to those two fights, Mosley had not stopped anyone inside the distance in four previous fights at junior middleweight. Heck, Mosley wasn’t even a hard hitter at welterweight. In 11 fights at that weight, the former lightweight champion has stopped only five opponents and their names are Wilfredo Rivera, Willy Wise, Antonio Diaz, Shannon Taylor and Adrian Stone.
Only the stoppage of Diaz stands out as being impressive. Mosley was a killer at lightweight, stopping all but one of his opponents in that division. His power supply was greatly reduced when he moved up first to welterweight and then to junior middleweight. Yet he was able to twice beat the daylights out of Vargas, who obviously had trouble making the weight and was therefore rendered weak.
Therein lies the scary part of this scenario. Virtually ever time a fighter gets seriously injured or killed in the ring, we find out that he had to go to ridiculous lengths to make weight – especially in the last week or so of preparation. They starve themselves, they drink as little water as possible, even though sometimes that’s all they are able to do is drink water. So what happens? The water that has been sapped from the brain makes a fighter much more vulnerable to a brain injury once they start getting punched in the head.
After Jimmy Garcia died from injuries suffered at the hands of Gabriel Ruelas in May 1995, we found out that Garcia had reportedly lost 30 pounds in the last month of training. During the reporting stage of a subsequent story I wrote for one of the newspapers I work for entitled “Death in the Ring,” a doctor told me that there is no way a fighter can restore all the water in his brain in the 24 hours following a weigh-in.
Vargas, again by his own admission, has never done the right thing between fights. He eats his beans and tortillas – and as a fellow Mexican, I can relate to that – and he balloons up to 200 pounds. Then he has to torture himself – and his brain – to make weight. Now, the fight with Mayorga is to be contested at a catch-weight of 162 pounds as Vargas was smart enough to know that he can no longer make 154. That’s good, but when I saw him at his camp in early July, he was still in the 180s. That was obvious. He reportedly had gotten down to 170 last week, only to postpone the fight with Mayorga because of the anemia. According to Wikipedia, “Most commonly, people with anemia report a feeling of weakness or fatigue, general malaise and sometimes poor concentration.”
To be fair, Robert Ferguson, Vargas’ nutritionist, told FightNews.com that Vargas’anemia was due to blood loss from sores on his stomach. But a very good source of mine told me that Vargas is simply having trouble losing more weight. I don’t doubt he has anemia, but is it because of sores on his stomach, or because his body is telling him that everything he has put it through is more than catching up with him?
We left two voice mail messages for Vargas’ business manager, Joe Pecora, in order to get some clarification. He did not return them.
Here is the thing: Vargas does not have to do one more thing, and he will have left a lasting impression on the world of boxing. Even in defeat, he has retained an incredibly loyal fan base. As a fighter, he’s about as macho as they come.
“I think my fans know that I don’t know how to back down. I don’t know how to even if I’m lost, dead and beaten,” Vargas said during a conference call last week before the fight was postponed over the weekend “I don’t know how to say no. I think Mexicans and fight fans in general respect that from any human being because there are guys out there that are just dogs.”
Vargas is anything but. He said that when fans think of him, they are most likely to say, “I dig that cat because you just see eye to eye with that person, about how he is, what type of individual he is,” Vargas said. “He’s willing to take it to where other men say they will, but they don’t. And I honestly am humbled by the fact that everywhere I go my fans are with me win, lose or draw.”
Now, how many fighters who have suffered four serious thrashings can say that? Few, to be sure. Judging by some of Vargas’ comments last week, it sounds like even his family is concerned for his welfare.
“… I promised my family,” Vargas said of his impending retirement. “First of all, my other, second of all, my wife, both of them together; my wife is my rib and my mother, I come from my mother and I love my mother. They’re telling me just, “Please, we don’t need to fight any more. We don’t need to fight no more.’ This will be my last fight for pride.”
Pride can be a dangerous thing when it comes to boxing. Mayorga may not be the most technically sound fighter in the world, but he can crack. And since Vargas has never been that solid defensively, the recipe for disaster is present.
Vargas said he has taken good care of the money he has made during his 10 ½-year professional career. Enough so that he has started Vargas Entertainment Promotions. The smart thing for him to do would be go leave the ring and concentrate on VEP, and the rest of his life.
Not one of his fans will say a bad thing about him. They know only too well just how brave their favorite fighter has been. Pride is a good quality. But it can have deadly repercussions. So can the tempting of fate.
Finally, I don’t like the way Vargas sounds on the telephone. He is difficult to understand. Not a good sign. If he fights Mayorga and escapes with his life, he could still take enough punches to the head that his life in retirement might not be as sweet as it could be. I’d hate to see him walking around like Bobby Chacon, who has a severe case of dementia pugilistica.
Yo, Fernando. Just say adios.
The best website……
[...]here are some links to sites that we link to because we think they are worth visiting[...]……