A new Viloria and his latest dream

For a while Fil-American Brian Viloria’s historic flyweight title unification fight Saturday evening (Sunday morning in Manila) at the Los Angeles Sports Arena looked like it was going the way of his unsuccessful defense of his International Boxing Federation’s (IBF) 112-pound crown against Colombia’s Carlos Tamara on Jan. 23, 2010 at the Cuneta Astrodome.

Viloria, based in Hawaii and known as “The Hawaiian Punch”, was ahead on points but faded in the late rounds to lose by a 12th round TKO with 1:45 left in the fight. Tamara held the IBF junior flyweight title before wresting the flyweight crown from Viloria, who suffered from extreme fatigue and was brought out on a stretcher at bout’s end.

Viloria, who’s the first unified World Boxing Association and World Boxing Organization flyweight champion since 1965, decked Marquez in the first, fifth and 10th rounds to reflect the brutality of the fight rather than the opposition Marquez offered. Vilori, in fact, found himself in queer street in the fifth and 10th rounds and in both instances fought his way out of trouble dropping Marquez with a right in the fight’s second knockdown just as Viloria looked like he was about to go down.

Although not wanting in energy and work rate, Marquez, slowed down by Viloria’s clever and effective body attack, was obviously behind by the fifth round until the Mexican decided to seize the initiative throwing a right hook that rocked Viloria. Instead of slowing down Viloria, the flurry of punches thrown by the Mexican served to trigger a Viloria counter attack that saw a right hand landing smack on the side of Marquez’s face.

The 10th had Marquez starting to press Viloria who by then seemed to show the same signs of fatigue that led to his loss to Tamara. In a superb display of technique and conditioning, Viloria uncorked a left hook that brought Marquez down for the last time. While the referee was doing the knockdown count, Viloria was seen in the background looking at Marquez’s corner led by Viloria’s former trainer, Robert Garcia.

Marquez, flat on his back, beat the count but the subsequent battering he got, prompted Garcia to literally wave the white flag of surrender. Obviously, Marquez’s rubbery legs would just pave the way for more injuries, some of which could be fatal and career-threatening.

It was obvious that Viloria has developed more power in the last several years and fought a smart tactical fight that befuddled the brawling Marquez. It was also clear that the “Hawaiian Punch” was unmindful and unaffected by Marquez’s power that the Mexican used to stop five of his last opponents since 2010, including Filipino Edrin Dapudong whom he stopped in the third round on July 2, 2011 in Hermosillo, Sonora, Mexico.

Asked by AFP in a post-fight interview about Marquez’s vaunted firepower, boxing’s newest unified title-holder chose to make light of it: “I knew it looked bad but I wasn’t hurt. I know he was going to get tired. I think my left was too fast for him.” The statement of Viloria seemed to speak volumes of Marquez’s tendency to punch himself out much in the same way George Foreman spent himself landing ineffective punches on Muhammad Ali’s arms as the latter introduced his “rope a dope” tactics prior to shocking the boxing world with a knockout of the massively-built, power-punching Foreman in Kinshasa, Zaire in the late 1970’s.

With Viloria’s spectacular victory over the same tough hombre that Nonito Donaire pounded into submission via an eighth round TKO on July 10, 2010, the Fil-American who will turn 32 on Nov. 24, improved his record to 32 wins (19 KOs), three losses and two no contests. Marquez, 24, on the other hand, dropped to 34 (25 KOs)-3 losses. For Viloria’s next fight, this early there is talk of light flyweight champion Roman “Chocolatito” Gonzalez moving up to the next division to fight Viloria.

Gonzalez defeated Juan Francisco Estrada in the other featured bout of the evening.

In response to this possible bout, Viloria stated that the fight is one of the options but he would want to rest first. 

Viloria’s main concern at this point however, aside from choosing from a list of opponents is to get over his frustration about the sparse media attention given to him despite what he feels has been a number of outstanding performances. This lack of media appreciation, particularly by HBO and Showtime who still have to cover his fights, has served as stimuli for Viloria to prepare hard for Marquez and win in spectacular fashion to prove that he’s worth covering.

As one of the country’s boxing treasures and considering the big Asian boxing base in the States, we can only hope that this latest dream of Viloria comes true.