SAN ANTONIO – The withering aridity that made this city consider water rations has finally broken. The drought is on, many inches of rainfall are still needed in Edwards Aquifer, but local worries now subside as the recharge zone gradually fills.
Would that the same could be said of Alamo City’s championship-prizefighter drought.
Saturday the drought continued – a championless stretch that began 17 years ago when Gabriel Ruelas took Jesse James Leija’s WBC super featherweight belt in MGM Grand – as local contender Raul “Cobrita” Martinez lost a unanimous decision to Rodrigo “Gatito” Guerrero after an accidental head butt opened a gash over Martinez’s right eye in round 6 and brought their IBF super flyweight title fight to a technical decision in Tijuana. Official scores went 59-55, 57-56 and 57-56 for Guerrero.
My scorecard concurred, 48-46. I had rounds 2, 3 and 6 for Guerrero. Rounds 4 and 5 were Martinez’s. Round 3 went 10-8 for Guerrero because he dropped Martinez with a left cross from his southpaw stance.
Wait, what about round 1? Good question. To answer it, we return to the rains.
Saturday marked the first rainy weekend in what felt like ages for South Texans. Artpace San Antonio, a downtown gallery that describes itself as “an international laboratory for the creation and advancement of contemporary art,” hosted its annual Chalk It Up event. Professional artists, dilettantes and students all gathered to adorn the sidewalks of Houston Street with colorful dust. Then, as the old rhyme goes, down came the rains and washed the chalk dust out. Bad timing is all.
If you are a baseball fan, or a connoisseur of delayed Spanish-language boxing broadcasts, you already know San Antonio was not the only Texas city that got wet Saturday. Game 1 of the American League Championship Series saw the Texas Rangers and Detroit Tigers suffer two rain delays in Arlington. On the English-language channel, that meant enduring witty clubhouse banter. On Fox Deportes, it meant cutting to a feed of Guerrero-Martinez two minutes into the first round.
What happened in those opening minutes may be lost to posterity, but it can be extrapolated from the 16 minutes of combat that followed. Raul Martinez was likely the classier boxer, and Rodrigo Guerrero was the better fighter.
Not this digression again? Afraid so.
Martinez is a two-time national amateur champion. He is 28 years-old, and going into Saturday’s fight – a rematch of a split-decision victory over Guerrero in November – his record was 28-1 (16 KOs). Martinez turned pro at age 22, and guided by knowledgeable folks, tore through the table-setters put in his way. Then he faced another world-class talent, in his 25th fight, and Nonito Donaire undid him.
Mexico City’s Rodrigo Guerrero trod an entirely different path to Saturday’s Tijuana arena. He turned pro at age 17 and won only half his opening four matches. His record was a comparatively unimpressive 15-3-1 (10 KOs) coming into his rematch with Martinez.
Martinez is a better athlete than Guerrero. Martinez loves to win. He is enamored of the idea of being a world champion. He has heart and a bit of contempt, too; if you hit him, he’ll hit you back. But Martinez does not love hurting and being hurt by another man.
Guerrero does. Where Martinez’s combinations are scoring devices, Guerrero swings his right fist to hurt you. Switching between southpaw and orthodox, Guerrero chases exchanges with an opponent, and if that means punches stray low or heads collide, well, so is the way of the world. It’s a fight after all.
Martinez would likely beat Guerrero in any three-round amateur bout. But prizefighting is a different thing altogether.
At the end of round 1, a Guerrero punch went low on Martinez. As the bell rang, Martinez doubled over before recuperating quickly enough to walk to his corner. Halfway through the fourth, Martinez struck Guerrero with an equally low blow. Guerrero backed off and signaled for the referee, who did not intervene. Martinez put an effective combination on the distracted Guerrero, and in an instant Guerrero returned to his fighting stance and plotted to punish Martinez.
(It was the antithesis of Victor Ortiz’s reaction to Floyd Mayweather’s left hook a few weeks ago.)
Two rounds later, Martinez’s and Guerrero’s heads collided as they’d done a number of times. Head butts happen when a southpaw fights an orthodox opponent, and they happen, too, when one fighter crosses-over and punches on the second and third step like Martinez did Saturday. The accidental butt damaged Martinez more than Guerrero. And Guerrero’s ripping left uppercuts in the minute that followed pulled apart the skin over Martinez’s right eye further still.
If Martinez had not yet started to fade, he was not gaining pace either. He returned to his corner at the midway point of the fight with his face covered in blood. According to Dr. Jose Luis Hernandez, the ringside physician who stopped the match, Martinez said he could not see out of his right eye, making the doctor’s decision an easy one.
Guerrero’s corner was ecstatic at the stoppage. Their man had won the fight. This would have been true even if the official judges – all three American – had said otherwise. Since the match ended on a cut caused by an accidental foul, not a punch, the judges’ collective opinion had to be heard when Martinez could not continue. The judges got it right.
There was no time for postfight commentary, as the rains in Arlington had stopped by then and the baseball game was about to restart. While we’ll never know what the fighters would have said, it’s a safe bet each man thought he won.
Guerrero and Martinez’s rivalry now stands at 1-1. A rubber match is a fair way to determine the better man and prove decisively whether Martinez belongs in this city’s pantheon of world champions.
Bart Barry can be reached via Twitter @bartbarry
