Fight of the Year: Trinidad-Mayorga.

Compared to recent boxing years, 2004 has acquitted itself very well and with approximately five weeks left to be further embellished with more hallmark moments, I do not feel I am being too presumptuous in declaring the true candidate for fight of the year honors. It was

a fiercely profound rebuttal to the strategic meanderings displayed by Bernard Hopkins and Oscar de la Hoya two weeks prior. Explosions were a certainty in Felix Trinidad’s return against Ricardo Mayorga, but what actually elapsed between the two fighters exceeded all expectations. Routinely throughout the boxing year, a tone is established, an equilibrium balanced in the general boxing consciousness by the steady stream of notable results and performances. However, occasionally a fight produces a spectacle that defies the logical perceptions already gathered and the happening that was Trinidad-Mayorga held true to that tradition. It was the type of fight that inspired religious outbursts; I know that I have never cried to the heavens so often during one fight because of the immensities of courage and power on display. In a sense, Mayorga proved to be the architect of his own demise due to the predictably crass and provocative dismissals of his opponent during the fights promotion. Trinidad’s typically serene and respectful demeanor was broken down gradually by Mayorga’s remorselessly insulting tirades towards him; but Mayorga’s insistent goading was not a master-class of reverse psychology aimed to tempt Trinidad forward before a deceptive game-plan of evasiveness and textbook boxing would be revealed to defeat him as Hopkins had done. Mayorga harbored no such sophisticated ideology; his aim was to lure Trinidad into his clutches before administering the savagery that was his renown.

The euphoric raptures that enveloped Madison Square Gardens in those precious seconds before the opening bell affirmed that boxing is still loved and when real fights are given to them, the people are more than willing to show their ample affections. Mayorga’s greeting of Trinidad with almost two minutes of his swarming and wildly exciting advances was predictable but nonetheless hazardous for Trinidad to traverse en-route to completing his first round in over two years. However, Trinidad’s first truly venomous responses ignited the fire within Mayorga and the confrontation everyone had so desired would not be denied any longer. Suddenly alight with his famous bravado, Mayorga stood before his foe and dropped his hands, exposing his defiant features to an attack. When Mayorga had first delighted the boxing world with this impetuous display before former welterweight champion Vernon Forrest, he was answered with Forrest’s inherent caution before two calculated right hands from the American tempered Mayorga’s temerity. Trinidad however, possessed none of Forrest’s patience and inhibition; he leaned his weight into a left hook that Mayorga duly absorbed, but its accomplice shook the Nicaraguan Wildman, leaving the abrasions of concern upon his face and doubt upon his heart.

In the third, Trinidad’s penchant for instilling fear in the hearts of his millions of followers proved that his killer instinct was not all that had remained intact throughout his self-imposed ring exile. The Puerto Rican was adjudged by referee Steve Smoger to have touched the canvas in retreat from a left-right combination from Mayorga. This habitual aberration would only be consequential on the scorecards as Trinidad roared back to compensate for the indignation. Significantly, a distinct dynamic began to emerge. Usually, it was the posturing and subsequent mauling and marauding of Mayorga that dominated the audience’s consciousness throughout his fights. Here, it was Trinidad that heightened theintensity of the combat, stealing the eye with his sharpened combinations and eclipsing Mayorga’s efforts with consistent success. One punches’ impact inspired the roar from the crowd that spurred on its companion and one felt that the very will of the people was driving the action to an almost insurmountable crescendo.

By the fifth, Mayorga’s bewildered features had endured a tidal wave, a punishing barrage of virtually every punch in a fighter’s armory, all thrown with the same vicious accuracy. Suddenly, whatever thoughts of victory being entertained in Mayorga’s mind were engulfed then eroded by a relentless attack from Trinidad; the force of each blow compelling Mayorga’s body to the direction of its will. The only response came from Mayorga’s skin, which finally broke under his left eye leaving tears of blood streaming down his face. The sixth round was as close to surrender as Mayorga would approach. Exhaustion seemed to bind his guard, leaving his face vulnerable for the many unanswered punches Trinidad duly obliged to inflict. Referee Smoger administered warnings to Trinidad for low blows and Mayorga’s desperation began to mount as he belatedly complained in accordance with Smoger’s remonstrations. Mayorga’s last real offensive came at the round’s end but it was weakened, dispirited and quite futile under Trinidad’s onslaught.

The final two rounds saw Mayorga’s courage forced to its limits; it held to its task but threatened to fail him through his constant complaints. Mayorga was the fighter that bullied Cory Spinks and ridiculed him, even questioned his manhood when Spinks consistently fell to the floor in the fallout of their uncoordinated exchanges. Mayorga could escape accountability for the Spinks fight through spewing such negative allegations at Spinks and alluding to an underhanded conspiracy at his own expense, now against Trinidad, he was being removed from his pedestal by a force entirely more dangerous and irresistible than he had imagined.

In the eighth, Mayorga’s resistance finally crumbled under the scything effects of a left hook to the right side of his ribcage, the punishing and paralyzing blow that so completely condemned De La Hoya to defeat. However, Mayorga rose and stared defeat in the face advancing towards him in the shape of a Puerto Rican legend ravenously stalking his own redemption. Full of malicious inevitability, Trinidad raged forward once again until Mayorga collapsed a second time. At ringside, Don King was conspicuous by his decidedly vacant expression; the promoter, once agitated enough at the failings of Mike Tyson against Evander Holyfield to simulate the right hands Tyson would never land was stone-faced amid the clamor of Madison Square Garden. Trinidad compelled Mayorga to the canvas one last time, it was finally over, the agony, the ecstasy revealed in equal measure. As Mayorga’s beaten body lay shielded by Smoger, Trinidad strolled across the ring, he raised his arms to his adoring fans and felt home again.

A concept that solidifies my belief that fighters are a breed apart from all other athletes is that there is a unique space they enter in their darkest moments of combat. A place beyond the reaches of adversity, a wilderness of pain at the very mouth of defeat, a testament to the power of the mind in that when the body is failing, the mind has barely begun to summon its deadliest strength. All fighters must transcend the confines of themselves and negotiate this sacred ground on their path to true greatness, yet few instances of this appear before us in these modern times. The warrior has no choice but to take this way, and in my eyes, surviving its peril grants an affirmation worth more than any title. Such moments resonate through the ages like a singular euphoric moment of clarity in an otherwise cacophonous symphony. Trinidad walked that hallowed earth when he overcame Fernando Vargas; later he would weep at the magnitude of his struggle. In defying the limits of absorbable punishment and scorningthe inner reaches of our humanity, imploring him to take no more, Mayorga carved his own distinction on that same ground. Statisticians offer boxing as a measured world of precise and telling elements, of weight and physical dimension, but Mayorga’s performance was a demonstration of the spirit, a boundless and soulful expression beyond man’s comprehension and one that even defeat could not taint.

I once described Felix Trinidad as a fighter that does not simply beat a man, he ruins him. Before fighting Trinidad, Ricardo Mayorga was a man on a mission in search of his eight figure fight, after fighting Trinidad, Mayorga announced his retirement. By the time a fighter reaches the upper echelons of world class competition such as the Trinidad’s, Tszyu’s and De La Hoya’s of the world, they will have already notched up approximately twenty years of competitive fighting accompanied by the rigors of the training that is simply part of the territory. Trinidad and Tszyu used 2004 to write a new chapter for posterity; it tells of the fighter rejuvenated after a long spell away from the ring, not rusted and dormant. There was so much to admire in Trinidad’s work: the fluency of movement, the crisp combinations and the economy with which they were chosen, the alertness in defense, the focus and intensity and most certainly the pure and perhaps limitless power.

Bernard Hopkins defeated Trinidad three years ago and appeared to give us a gauge of the Puerto Rican’s range, an idea of his limitations. Certainly, Trinidad has not returned to go unchallenged and if vengeance lies in his heart, God help anyone who obstructs his path to Hopkins. Hopkins and De La Hoya have looked to the future and formed a progressive alliance that may see them usurp the positions of the monopolistic money men they once toiled beneath as fighters. For Trinidad, you sense that victory and glory is all there is and ever will be. Has this Felix Trinidad, a reinvigorated entity become an unanswerable challenge for Hopkins? We will see, but for now, he is what he has always been: a hero to his people, a champion of champions and a fighter needed now more than ever in the fight game.

Jim Cawkwell can be reached at jam2lis@sprint.ca