By Chris Williams: Israel Vazquez (44-4, 32 KO’s) and Rafael Marquez (38-5, 34 KO’s) meet for the 4th time in their career this Saturday night at the Staples Center, in Los Angeles, California. The fight is more like an old timer’s fight rather than a fight between two relevant contenders, unfortunately. Vazquez and Marquez, due their three previous wars in the past three years, have used each other up to the point where it’s kept them out of the ring.

You can expect this Saturday’s fight to be just as violent as the other three, but it won’t likely last nearly as long as those fights. Both fighters have taken too much punishment in those fights and they’ve aged. Marquez is 35 and Vazquez is 32. Depending on the fighter, that could be young or it could be old. With them, they’ve looked old in their recent fights. Vazquez defeated Angel Antonio Priolo in his last fight and got pretty well beaten up in that fight, even though Priolo isn’t a top tier fighter. That’s a bad sign coming into this fight. Marquez, for his part, fought a year ago, beating Jose Francisco Mendoza by a 3rd round TKO.

Vazquez and Marquez’s first two fights of their trilogy were incredibly exciting with both fighters going toe-to-toe and landing huge shots. However, by the time that they fought for the third time in 2008, you could see that they both had slowed down dramatically and didn’t look like the same fighters they once were. That was two years ago, and both fighters look older now and less impressive in their recent fights. At best, I think their fight might make it to the 6th or 7th rounds, but that’s about it. There’s too much scar tissue around their eyes and they look pretty well beaten up from their past fights for this bout to go long. It would be nice to see the two of them fighting like they did in their first two bouts in 2007, but that’s probably not too realistic at this point given the years that have gone by and the damage they inflicted upon each other in those fights.

Vazquez has won the last two fights, but I have a feeling he’s going to come up short this Saturday. He looked dreadful against Priolo and took enormous punishment in that fight, having both eyes badly swollen and his nose looking like it was broken. Vazquez’s hand speed appeared to be gone and his work rate was way down from what it used to be. To his credit, Vazquez was able to summon up some of his old power in the 9th and stop Priolo, but he paid a big price in the fight with all the shots he took from Priolo. At the time of the stoppage, I had Priolo well ahead in the fight. Two of the judges had it 76-76, 76-76 and the third, incredibly, had Vazquez ahead by the score of 78-74.