By Jason Kim: Former WBC/WBO super bantamweight and IBF/WBC super featherweight champion, now fighting as a lightweight, Marco Antonio Barrera (64-6, 43 KOs) stopped journeyman Sammy Ventura (25-20, 20 KOs) in the 4th round on Friday night at the Sichuan Gymnasium, in Chengdu, China. Barrera, 34, dropped Ventura with a flurry of hard body shots in the 4th. Referee Kenny Bayless then stepped in and halted the bout at 1:01 of the round.
For Barrera, it was his first victory at his new lightweight class, yet he looked slow, slightly heavy, and not nearly as impressive as he did while in his prime six years ago when he defeated Eric Morales in an epic battle for the WBC featherweight title. At lightweight, Barrera’s hand speed is visibly slower, and his power not as good as it was in the lower weight classes.
There was very little action in the first round, as Barrera plodded after Ventura, 33, throwing slow punches, his timing way off and missing often. Ventura, for the most part, fought Barrera to a standstill in the round. In fact, Barrera looked little better than him. That’s a worrisome situation, because Ventura is little more than a C-class fighter, yet Barrera looked just a little better than him in the early going.
In the second round, Barrera stepped up the action, coming after Ventura with body shots. When he would attempt to throw punches to the head, Barrera’s punches had little effect, looking weak and slow. Ventura once again made it close as he attacked Barrera back, finding it easy to hit him. Barrera’s defense has never been good, but he looked much worse than I can ever remember him looking in the past.
In the third round, Ventura began retreating all around the ring as Barrera started opening up with a huge amount of hard body shots. At one point late in the round, Ventura turned his back on Barrera and looked as if he wanted to quit, perhaps due to the hard body shots that Barrera was landing against him now.
In the 4th round, Barrera continued coming after him, pressuring him hard and nailing him with hard body shots. Finally, Barrera trapped Ventura up against the ropes and landed four consecutive blistering shots to his midsection, the last of which caused Ventura to sink to the canvas in obvious pain. After Ventura hit the canvas, referee Kenny Bayless moved in and halted the fight at 1:01 of the round. Ventura may have been able to continue but with the kind of body shots that Barrera was hitting him with, he would have been dropped again within a short time.
Overall, Barrera looked decent, but in no way good enough to beat any of the top lightweights like Anthony Peterson, Manny Pacquiao, Edwin Valero, Juan Diaz, Joel Casamayor or Breidis Prescott. However, due to his still popular name, he might get a title shot regardless whether he fights a top contender or not. I think he’ll lose badly, of course, but he’ll at least get a good payday out of it. Ideally, he needs to try and move back down to the featherweight division, if at all possible, where he might possibly have a chance against fighters like Oscar Larios, Chris John, Steve Luevano, or Yuriorkis Gamboa.