Barrera vs. Nolasco on January 31st

By Boxing News - 01/09/2009 - Comments

barrera5355336By Jason Kim: In another instance of a fighter that probably needs to hang them up, former super bantamweight, featherweight and super featherweight champion Marco Antonio Barrera (64-6, 43 KOs) is planning to return to the ring later this month for a 10-round bout against the unknown John Nolasco (17-4-4, 8 KOs) in Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico. Barrera, 35, hasn’t looked good in the ring for ages dating back to his third fight with Erik Morales in 2004.

Since then, Barrera has slowed badly and looked poor in loses to Juan Manuel Marquez and Manny Pacquiao in 2007. Following those back to back losses, Barrera moved up in weight to the lightweight division where he recently defeated Sammy Ventura (25-20, 20 KOs) in a 4th round TKO in November.

The victory said nothing about what Barrera has left of his once great skills, as Ventura was a journeyman, at best, and not the type of opponent that a fighter like Barrera should be fighting at this stage of his career if he’s serious about wanting to challenge for a title.

Despite his two losses in his last three fights, incredibly Barrera is ranked high in the lightweight division, ranked #1 in the WBO and #4 in the WBA. Given his high ranking in the WBO, it would suggest that Barrera is not far from a title shot against champion Nate Campbell.

Frankly, that’s not a fight that I’d personally like to see at this late stage in Barrera’s career, as I see him taking a severe beating resulting in him being stopped at some point in the fight. Up until now, Barrera has been extremely fortunate to have only been stopped once in his career, an 11th round TKO loss to Manny Pacquiao in November 2003.

In their rematch in October 2007, a fight which resulted in Pacquiao easily beating Barrera by a 12-round unanimous decision. There some who said that Pacquiao took it easy on Barrera and didn’t take him out for a second time. From what I saw of the fight, Pacquiao seemed to treat the fight like a sparring match, content to jab Barrera at a distance and occasionally hit him with shots but not really pouring it on.

Barrera hardly did anything in the fight in terms of offense and fought poorly, totally unlike his former aggressive style of fighting.

Taking a year off, Barrera came back in 2008, now fighting as a lightweight. The extra weight didn’t look good on Barrera, making him look slightly pudgy and a step slower. Against the journeyman Ventura , fought on November 7th, Barrera, looking slow and lethargic did little in the opening round and was nailed often by Ventura.

Barrera’s hand speed looked horrible, as he missed often when he would try to land to the head. In the 2nd round, Barrera continued getting hit a lot by Ventura and showing poor defense. Barrera was now landing but having little effect as his punches seemed to lack power in the lightweight level.

Indeed, Barrera looked still mostly like a super featherweight with an extra five pounds of fat on his body to bring him to the lightweight level. In the 3rd, Barrera landed well to the body and was able to hurt Ventura on a couple of occasions.

In the 4th round, Barrera, seeing that Ventura didn’t like taking shots to the body, went after him with big body shots, dropping him to the canvas which resulted in the fight being stopped at 1:01 of the 4th.



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