NEW YORK --- While it loomed an interesting, competitive and (thanks to several theatrically vituperative pre-fight exchanges in the run-up) possibly even a vicious fight, last Friday’s engagement between Ricardo Mayorga and Fernando Vargas didn’t figure to make much impact on the boxing landscape one way or the other.
No title was at stake, and it has been some time since either man has been featured on anyone’s pound-for-pound lists. The favorite (Vargas) had been stopped in each of his last two fights, and the underdog was looking at his fourth loss in seven fights.
Who should care, then? Well, Vernon Forrest, for one.
Forrest, who defends his WBC junior middleweight title against Michello Piccirillo at Foxwoods Saturday night, has other things on his mind at the moment, but El Matador’s redemptive win over Vargas creates the opportunity for Forrest to atone for the past by facing the only man to have beaten him in 41 professional bouts.
Is Mayorga III a natural fight for Forrest? “Absolutely,” said promoter Gary Shaw when Saturday night’s Showtime participants hit New York for a bit of pre-fight banter at Gallagher’s Tuesday afternoon.
“Had Vargas won, I don’t believe he would have retired,” said Shaw, “But Mayorga winning makes (a third Mayorga-Forrest fight) REAL real.”
One need only go back seven years to the dawn of the millennium to see how all of this has played out. Back in 2000, Oscar De La Hoya suffered the first of what would eventually be two losses to Shane Mosley, and Sugar Shane immediately shot to the top of most everyone’s pound-for-pound list.
Two years later Mosley suffered back-to-back losses to Forrest, his old amateur nemesis, and then in 2003, Forrest lost twice to Mayorga.
Interestingly, there was never a third bout in any of those rivalries, nor, until recently, did there seem to be any great interest in one. Forrest, inactive for two years after the second Mayorga fight, dropped almost completely off the radar screen, while Mayorga’s career seemingly lapsed into self-parody when he was stopped by both Felix Trinidad and De La Hoya, ate his way out of a Jose Rivera fight at the Garden, and was arrested on rape charges in his Nicaraguan homeland.
Four years later, with Forrest once again owning a world championship and Mayorga sending Vargas into retirement with two knockdowns at the Staples Center, interest may have been revived.
“I’d be willing to make that fight any time, it was available, but that fight has always been there,” said Forrest.
Yeah. But would anyone have paid to watch it had last weekend’s fight played out differently? Showtime says it would – now.
“I think it is a fight people want to see,” agreed Forrest.
Mayorga, of course, fought Vargas at a career-high 164 pounds. Could he make junior middleweight for another crack at Forrest?
“Well, he says he can make 147, so I have to believe he can make 154,” said Shaw. “I think he just ate his way up to fight Vargas and became a super-middleweight, ah, prematurely.”
As obvious a matchup as Mayorga-Forrest III might be, it is by no means certain to be the next on either man’s dance card. Few would be surprised to see Golden Boy make a run at Mayorga as Mosley’s next opponent, and, as enticing as the prospect for revenge might be, El Matador wouldn’t necessarily be Forrest’s first choice, either.
“Put it this way,” said Forrest, “If I had a choice between fighting Oscar and a third fight with Mayorga, I’d definitely take Oscar. It would be a more interesting (not to mention far more lucrative) fight.”
But lest we get ahead of ourselves, added Shaw, “I haven’t even discussed the (Mayorga) fight with anyone, and I won’t until after this one. Everybody who knows me knows I’m way too superstitious for stuff like that.”
“I never overlook anybody,” agreed Forrest. “Mayorga’s not even on my landscape right now. The biggest fight of my career right now is against Michele Piccirillo Saturday night.”
Piccirillo, who hails from Vito Antofermo’s birthplace of Bari, is 48-3 in a pro career that spans 15 years, with two of the losses coming in title fights against Cory Spinks and Mayorga. (Forrest, 0-2 against Mayorga, is 39-0 against the rest of the world.)
The two are hardly strangers. Back in 1991 they fought as amateurs in the first round of the World Championships in Australia, with Forrest prevailing on a 33-15 decision.
“I was counted two times by the referee without reason,” explained Piccirillo. “And fter the fight, I had surgery on my right hand.”
They might have met ten years later, in 2001, when Piccirillo loomed the mandatory for Forrest’s IBF welterweight title. When Vernon opted instead to fight for Mosley’s WBC championship in early ‘02, the IBF stripped him, and Piccirillo decisioned Spinks in a fight for the vacant belt, only to lose it back in a rematch a year later.
Forrest describes Piccirillo as “a very good technical boxer, and a mover.”
Does the Italian remind him of anyone else?
“Yeah, myself,” said Forrest. “My style is different from his, but we do a lot of the same things.”
Forrest-Piccorillo is one of two genuine world title fights scheduled for Saturday night’s Showtime card on the Mashantucket Pequod reservation. New IBF flyweight champion Nonito Donaire’s defense against Luis Maldonado will be the other.
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