SAN ANTONIO – Rocky Juarez spent his career being an honest prizefighter who never quite found within himself a transcendent performance when the occasion demanded one. Monday’s match was no exception, and Juarez’s retirement, announced immediately afterwards, was no surprise.
Fighting in the main event of a good card at Cowboys Dancehall, Houston’s Juarez (30-11-1, 21 KOs) dropped a lopsided and unanimous decision to Mexican featherweight Robinson Castellanos (21-10, 13 KOs) by scores of 118-106, 118-106 and 118-107.
“I wanted to announce my retirement today,” Juarez said over the PA system while still in the ring. “This will be my best time to announce that – here, in my home state, in front of my family and friends.
“I had a great run, and I tried, I tried. I love you guys. Thank you.”
After an opening pair of uneventful rounds, rounds in which the significantly shorter and older Juarez could not close distance easily as he might have in bygone years, the Houstonian began to impose himself in the third, bodying the larger Castellanos and driving him several times to the ropes, where Juarez had a few chances to score.
In round 4, Juarez’s age began to tell more than his experience, though, and with his balance compromised by older legs, Juarez began to have trouble timing his lanky opponent. Round 5 saw Juarez overcommit to a left hook, spin in a trance, and lose his footing. Juarez’s slip was incorrectly ruled a knockdown. Solace, though, came in the form of a large cut over the outside of Castellanos’ right eye.
The sixth round was an excellent one, with each man having to be shown to the doctor to verify the dangers of cuts sustained over his eyes. The seventh was more of what its predecessor comprised, with Juarez getting a close-quarters firefight, whether he wanted one or not.
In the eighth, Castellanos’ punches continued to tell, with a series of right uppercuts moving Juarez backwards involuntarily for the first time in the fight. The ninth was another brutal affair, with Castellanos’ face beginning to swell and bleed disproportionately more than Juarez’s.
With both men worn and exhausted going into the championship rounds, the pace slackened slightly in the 11th. Juarez’s short and crisp punches lost most of their snap, and Castellanos’ long and looping right hands becoming wider and wilder.
The final round was not kind to the aged warrior Juarez. Despite, or perhaps because of, a characteristically honest effort throughout, Juarez’s legs abandoned him in the 12th, dropping him on the canvas thrice – as much from exhaustion as punishment. Juarez rose all three times and rallied to fight Castellanos off him in the closing seconds, but it was little more than a moral victory for Juarez, for whom the 12th round made a points victory mathematically impossible.
Juarez’s honest fighting style and serious approach to our beloved sport set him apart and will be sorely missed.
KEANDRE GIBSON VS. NELSON LARA
Monday’s co-main event, undefeated Nevada welterweight KeAndre Gibson (12-0-1, 5 KOs) against Nicaraguan Nelson Lara (15-7-5, 8 KOs), began like a matchup all too commonplace in prizefighting today: An athlete who hates being hit against a journeyman too slow to imperil him. As the second round began, though, the athlete opened up, the journeyman began to land, and entertainment suddenly happened.
However lopsided the official scores – three tallies of 80-72 for Gibson – the evening’s co-main was an excellent fight, and a stiff test for Gibson, who earned every round he narrowly took from Lara.
The close of the third round, the match’s most competitive minute to that point, even saw the Nicaraguan land a flurry that brought a rousing cheer from the partisan-Latino, South Texas crowd.
By round 7, with both fighters winded, Gibson began to body the smaller man, wrestling him to the ropes and going to work on him from close quarters. It may have been a tactical error, though, as Lara, finally able to make contact with Gibson whenever he wished, began, by round’s end, to get the better of their exchanges.
But Gibson worked hard through the eighth and final round, winning a fair and unanimous decision.
Gibson may look the part – with a Las Vegas pedigree and statuesque physique – but the truth is, right now, he lacks the power to get guys out of fights in early rounds. And the later his fights go, the wider his mouth opens, and the more his impressive musculature begins to hinder him.
JAVIER RODRIGUEZ VS. QUINICE WESBY
Light-hitting local favorite Javier “Pitbull” Rodriguez (12-0-1, 2 KOs) brought his undefeated record to Cowboys Dancehall, a venue at which Rodriguez always sells plenty of tickets, in Monday’s swing bout against Dallas featherweight Quinice Wesby (2-8), an awkward specimen, and Rodriguez also brought a desire to change his reputation as a light-hitter.
After measuring Wesby with left hooks through the opening four rounds of the match, Rodriguez caught Wesby with a lead left hook that put his lights clean out and required no ten-count, winning by knockout at 0:49 of round 5.
Rodriguez won every round against the overmatched Wesby, whose bizarre stance and attack, his lead hand held almost as though his arm were broken, undermined his own offense more than it affected Rodriguez’s.
While Rodriguez continues to build himself as a local attraction, and ensured even more tickets will be sold with Monday’s excellent finish, one still worries what shall come to pass if and when his competition improves, and he has to fight aggressive opponents with good chins off him.
UNDERCARD
The evening’s fourth match, San Antonio lightweight Christian Santibanez (1-3) versus Austin’s Albert Romero (2-3-1), brought a loud reaction from the previously subdued crowd, as each man plied his limited wares in an aggressive manner that complemented the other. Romero prevailed by three scores of 39-37 in a fun, competitive match.
Before that, an uninspired six-round affair happened in the super featherweight division, as Texan Arturo Esquivel (9-2, 2 KOs) and Californian Jesus Sandoval (4-5-3) pawed and slapped their way to a close match official judges nevertheless saw for Sandoval, 60-54, 60-54 and 60-54.
Monday’s opening match, a lightweight showdown between two Texans, Robstown’s Robert Vela (11-0-2, 5 KOs) and San Antonio’s Ramiro Torres (4-28-1, 2 KOs), saw through most of its four rounds no way to distinguish the undefeated fighter from the one about to experience his 28th career loss. Despite the match’s unexpected competitiveness, though, the official scores for Vela were fair, going 39-37, 39-37 and 40-36.
Opening bell rang on a semi-full Cowboys Dancehall at 7:00 PM local time.
