Back From the Brink: 6 Fighters Who Have Risen From the Dust
Career momentum is a dicey issue with pro boxers. Fighters go from “hot” to “not” quicker than at any time in the sport’s history. Usually, when a fighter’s career is determined to be on a downward trajectory, it is extraordinarily difficult to reverse the inertia.
A fighter who is no longer considered a winner stops being put in winning spots. The matchmaking becomes harder, as the supposedly shot fighter is forced to take fights on the road, on short notice, or both. It is a very difficult task. The public will think you’re a winner, and then they think you’re a loser. Getting them to now consider you a winner again is a monumental task that most cannot pull off.
The manner in which these fighters rose from the ashes might not exactly be Lazarus-like, but let’s give credit to some men who have dusted themselves off and breathed some life back into their careers.
Kendall Holt
“Rated R” still has a ways to go if he hopes to recapture his status of several years ago, when he was perched at or near the top of the 140-pound class. Nevertheless, he has done well to avoid extinction—a fate that seemed inevitable following consecutive losses to Timothy Bradley and Kaizer Mabuza.
The loss to Bradley was forgivable. Bradley was flying high at the time and Kendall even managed to drop “Desert Storm” twice en route to a well-contested decision loss. But after getting stopped by the 22-6-3 Mabuza, the feeling was that Holt was nearing either retirement or steppingstone status.
A get-well quickie win over journeyman Lenin Arroyo restored some confidence, before he met former champ Julio Diaz in May. Diaz had looked good in defeating rated Herman Ngoudjo two fights previously, but soon found himself victimized by one of the best knockouts of the year, as Holt poleaxed him in the 3rd round. Holt next faces 21-0 red-hot prospect Danny Garcia in October. He did well to even be in this position, but a win over Garcia will really signal that Holt is back. With his power, you can never count out a guy like Holt.
Erik Morales
Fans breathed a sigh of relief when Morales retired in 2007 following 4 consecutive defeats—including 2 brutal knockouts at the hands of Manny Pacquiao. Those same fans groaned upon hearing of Morales’ return in 2010. If ever there was a shot fighter, it was Morales. He appeared to have lost everything and people wondered aloud if he would survive his comeback in one piece.
After a trio of tune-up wins, none of which showed Morales in terribly good form, he took on heavily favored titleholder Marcos Maidana. People feared for the great Mexican hero, but he showed the obituaries written on his career were a bit premature, giving Maidana all he could handle in losing a narrow majority decision.
On the Mayweather-Ortiz undercard, Morales once again showed some of his old flair, rising to the occasion to stop unbeaten Pablo Cano for a vacant alphabet strap. It was in some ways a vintage Morales performance, with Morales troubled by his younger opponent, before lashing out with venom and passion in typical “El Terrible” fashion.
Losing to Maidana and beating an unknown quantity in Cano will not place Morales’ comeback among the greatest of all time. But when you consider what he has been able to accomplish in light of what people were saying about his comeback when it began, it’s clear he has surpassed expectations and made some people look foolish in the process.
Jhonny Gonzalez
Is this guy still around? Gonzalez just turned 30, but it seems like he’s been around forever. He was doing well for a while, but his run at the top was jeopardized by a stoppage loss to Israel Vasquez in 2006. A strange body-shot KO loss to aging Gerry Penalosa two fights later seemed to nudge Gonzalez toward irrelevance even more. He really hit rock-bottom in 2009, when visiting Japanese champion Toshiaki Nishioka nearly took his head off en route to an emphatic 3rd-round TKO.
Gonzalez was only 28 at the time, but a long run at the top and 50 fights appeared to zap him of his zest. People stopped paying attention, but Jhonny kept plugging away. Another Japanese superstar, Hozumi Hasegawa, must have seen Nishioka’s knockout of Gonzalez and decided to try his luck. For 3 rounds, he was outboxing Gonzalez, until Gonzalez dropped the bomb in the 4th round, taking the WBC Featherweight Title in the process.
Gonzalez has scored a pair of defenses and now may be poised for some big fights in a still-crackling featherweight division. He is now on a roll of ten straight knockouts and apparently fully recovered from his funk of 2006-2009.
Jorge Arce
No boxer in recent memory has put to the test our preconceived notions on the topic of shot fighters than Arce. You would have been hard-pressed to find anyone who thought he would emerge from what looked like certain demise. In 2007, with his career ready to kick into high gear after an 8-year unbeaten streak, he was whitewashed by underdog Cristian Mijares.
He scored a few get-well wins, but a stoppage loss to Vic Darchinyan seemed to spell the end of his championship ways. A loss in his next fight, to aged and obscure Simphiwe Nongqayi, confirmed his crash. Some good matchmaking got him back on the winning track, as he beat neophytes and veterans even more washed up than Arce.
A 2010 draw against dormant Lorenzo Parra, when a point deduction cost Parra a win, really illustrated how far the little guy had fallen. When he was scheduled to fight Wilfredo Vasquez, Jr. for the WBO 122-pound belt, it was seen as a curtain call for the spent warrior—a chance to notch a little payday before fading off into oblivion. Arce was doing pretty well in the fight, even though he visited the canvas in round four.
In the 12th round of an even fight, Arce bottled up the pride, tenacity, and power that characterized his prime and finished off Vasquez to score an improbable win. There was a point several years ago where it seemed impossible that he would ever reign again, much less as a 122-pound champion. If sportsbooks laid odds on these things, the number on such an outcome would have been in the Lotto range. Arce will face Nongqayi shortly after this piece is written, but in snagging a belt and renewing some life to his career, he has already proved many of us wrong.
Hernan Marquez
Following two consecutive losses in 2010, it looked like Marquez would fade into obscurity. Losing to Nonito Donaire in the second of those losses was no shame, but a widely-scored decision loss to Richie Mepranum before that didn’t cast him in a terribly favorable light, either.
Another factor going against Marquez was his failure to win those fights forced you to look at the rest of his career—a buildup process against a string of guys with records so bad, it made you to reconsider the validity of his record. He seemed like an OK enough fighter, but we had seen it play out before—fighter builds up nice record against a bunch nobodies, steps up, and gets knocked back into anonymity.
He was a heavy underdog when he traveled to Panama to face their celebrated young champion—Luis Concepcion, the WBA Flyweight Champion. Concepcion was considered a young champion who one day could become the signature talent at 112 pounds. In a candidate for Fight of the Year, Marquez rose from the canvas and stopped Concepcion on his home-court in the 11th round of an absolute thriller.
And just like that—Marquez went from a guy people would mention to illustrate how weak Nonito Donaire’s competition was from 2008-2010 to a young flyweight champion with a big future. He’s only 23 and if he can beat Concepcion in an October rematch, he will really be on his way.
Cristian Mijares
His fall couldn’t have been any more graphic. One moment, he was on the pound-for-pound list, coming off a list of dominant victories as a 115-pound titleholder, including a whitewash of long-unbeaten Jorge Arce. Next thing you know, he had 3 straight losses—an emphatic knockout loss to Vic Darchinyan and a pair of decisions to Nehomar Cermeno. He didn’t just fall off; he basically turned into vapor in one of the more precipitous drops of any pound-for-pound entrant in recent memory.
Usually when a boxer gets as far as Mijares got, only to disintegrate, the rest of the story doesn’t go so well. And while the Mexican will probably never get back to the status he once enjoyed, his resilience is commendable. Following those 3 straight losses and being relegated to the scrapheap, Mijares has won 7 consecutive fights and snagged the IBF 115-pound belt.
Some might find his success to be only a minor consolation for his failings of a few years ago, when he had a chance to make a much bigger bang. But maybe this is where Mijares belonged all along, after failing to pull his weight in the role of top-ten pound-for-pounder. It’s just that the tribulations Mijares endured were enough to snuff out most boxers. Hats off to Mijares for soldiering through those moments to salvage what is still a pretty good career.
