By Manuel Perez: Coming into the fight having lost three out of his last five fights, super featherweight contender Rocky Juarez(28-4, 20 KOs) stopped Jorge Rodrigo Barrios (47-4-1, 34 KOs) in the 11th round on Saturday night at the Toyota Center, in Houston, Texas. Ranked #6 in the World Boxing Council super featherweight division, Juarez dropped Barrios, 32, with a left hand in the 11th round. After Barrios got up, however, his mouth was badly bleeding from a lacerated upper lip.
After the ringside doctor examined the cut and deemed that it was too serious for the fight to continue, referee Rafael Ramos stopped the fight at 2:55 of the 11th round. The fight, though, was marred by two one-point deductions made against Barrios for landing low blows – once in the 3rd and the other in the 9th – on the belt line of Juarez. The calls were silly and uncalled for in my estimation because Juarez was wearing his trunks up high, making it nearly impossible to hit him in the midsection without hitting him on the belt line like Barrios was doing. The second point deduction in the 9th seemed to change the fight, as before that Barrios was dominating the fight and looking to be on the way to winning it rather easily.
However, after the deduction, he stopped throwing body shots – his main weapon against Juarez -nearly as often as he did earlier while at the same time he appeared to try and compensate for the lost point by throwing enormous amounts of punches in an effort to win back the round. In the 10th round, Barrios threw an incredible 160 punches, landing almost 50 of them, succeeding in winning the round.
The problem, however, was that it ended up draining Barrios by the end of the 10th, leaving him in an exhausted state going into the 11th. Who knows what might have happened had the second point deduction not been called against Barrios, but I’d be willing to bet that he wouldn’t have gone all out throwing punches like he ended up doing, and very possibly would have won the fight.
With Juarez’s home crowd shouting his name, “Rocky” over and over again in the 11th round, Juarez suddenly came to life, throwing a flurry of hard shots, hurting Barrios putting him down with a big left hook. When he got up, he was spitting blood which was gushing from his mouth. The cut was then examined, and the fight stopped because of it.
For most of the fight, Barrios did little other than throw mainly jabs, whereas Barrios controlled the fight with combinations and aggressive fighting. Juarez, for the most part, looked average and it wasn’t surprising to me that he had lost three out of his last five fights watching him. I can’t say I was particularly impressed with his performance. He got the win, but looked awful for the first nine rounds and without the two low blow calls that gave him two points, he would have been badly trailing the fight going into the 11th round.
Under those circumstances, I doubt seriously he would have scored a knockout win over Barrios. Juarez looked more like a bottom 15 fighter than a top 6, and I can’t say I like his chances in the future of ever winning a major title. He mentioned wanting to fight Marquez after the fight, but he was already beaten soundly by him in his last fight, losing a one-sided 12-round decision, so I don’t think I’d like to see that fight. I’d much prefer to see a rematch with Barrios, except in a different state, possibly Nevada. Minus any low blow calls, I think the outcome will be much different next time out.