By Sean McDaniel: Cuban bantamweight prospected Yan Barthelemy (6-1) was upset by a little known Ernie Marquez (7-4, 3 KOs) in a six-round unanimous decision loss on Friday night at the Desert Diamond Casino, in Phoenix, Arizona. Barthelemy, 28, a former Olympic Gold Medal winner for the Cuban National team at the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens, in the Light Flyweight, didn’t have the speed or accuracy to deal with the quicker more elusive Marquez, who showed himself as clearly the better fighter in the opening minute of the first round when he repeatedly tagged the slower, awkward Barthelemy with fast right hands to the head.

Normally an elusive fighter who specializes on being a crafty defensive wizard, Barthelemy found himself getting hit often by Marquez, while at the same time having tremendous problems trying to land his own slower shots. Holding often, Barthelemy received repeated warnings from referee Robert Ferrara until the 6th round, when Barthelemy was finally penalized a point for his constant holding. In contrast to other fighters like Bernard Hopkins and Wladimir Klitschko, Barthelemy appeared to clinch much less often than them. However, the referee clearly wasn’t interested in seeing a fight filled with clinches, and warned Barthelemy often until finally tiring of it, and docking him a point in the last round.

The final judges’ scores were 58-55, 57-56 and 57-56 all for Marquez. I had Marquez winning all six rounds of the fight, because Barthelemy didn’t out-land Marquez in any of the rounds of the fight, and spent most of the time missing punches, moving or clinching. Barthelemy failed to capitalize on his two inch height advantage over the 5’5″ Marquez. In the 1st round, Marquez often rushed forward staying low and landing quick shots to the head of Barthelemy. In most of the cases, Marquez’s shots would miss as Barthelemy would retreat backwards or to the size, making Marquez’s punches miss by inches.

However, due to the high number of punches Marquez was throwing will coming forward, he was still able to land more than enough punches to win the rounds. Barthelemy, for his part, mostly missed, when he would attempt to throw punches, and otherwise he was totally focused on trying to avoid getting hit. I think Barthelemy seemed not to realize that this was a six-round fight, meaning that he had to fight hard in every rounds otherwise he’d be risking being out-worked by Marquez. This, unfortunately for Barthelemy, is exactly what happened.

I don’t for a second think that Marquez is a better fighter than Barthelemy. I just think that Marquez proved to be the smarter fighter when it came to fighting the short six round fights, and knew what he was doing better than Barthelemy, who looked distracted, and more than a little uncomfortable with all the pressure that Marquez was putting on him in the short fight. In the second round, Barthelemy continued clinching often, trying to slow Marquez’s offense down. On one occasion, Barthelemy grabbed Marquez’s right arm, thinking that he had him clinched and unable to punch, but Marquez merely nailed him with his free left hand several times to the head.

Marquez discovered then that he could do well when rushing forward and throwing fast shots, which Barthelemy would instantly retreat from and try to block. With the Cuban wasting time focusing entirely on his defense, this let Marquez dictate the pace of the fight. With each round, Marquez, who came into the fight with a poor 6-4 record, became more and more confident. At the same time, the crowd began to get into the fight with every punch that Marquez landed.

In the 3rd round, it became clear that Barthelemy was in trouble of losing the fight as he continued not letting his hands go, while backpedaling and continuing to take shots from Marquez. The referee gave Barthelemy, 28, a warning for holding in this round. In the 4th round, Marquez clashed heads with Barthelemy, opening up a big gash underneath the right eye of Marquez. The cut clearly bothered him as he frequently dabbed at it with his gloves.

Just after the head butt, Barthelemy immediately tried to take advantage of the situation by bum rushing Marquez while he was still concerned with the cut. Marquez, however, dodged Barthelemy’s wild attack, causing his punches to miss harmlessly in the air. Even with Marquez cut and seemingly distracted, Barthelemy still had no luck in landing his own shots due to his dreadful accuracy. In the 5th and 6th rounds, perhaps knowing that he was behind in the fight, Barthelemy attempted to take the fight to Marquez.

Unfortunately for Barthelemy, he continued to have big problems landing his punches, missing mostly everything he threw. Marquez turned the tables on him in the sixth round, and went after him with some good right hand shots. To make matters worse, the referee docked a point from Barthelemy for clinching, even though he wasn’t clinching all that much in the round. Certainly he wasn’t going all out with his punches, but he was far from clinching enough to be docked a point from what I could see of him in the round.