Chapter 3 of the Israel Vasquez-Rafael Marquez fight at Home Depot Center in Carson was so captivating, so compelling, so beautiful in its savagery, that it was everything any boxing fan could hope for. I don't know how much of themselves these two magnificent warriors can give against each other, but I sure want to find out again, just not too soon. Diego Corrales and Jose Luis Castillo set the bar so high with their epic first battle, but they came back too soon to fight again against each other. These two kids, Vasquez and Marquez put themselves in the same lofty area as Corrales-Castillo, so they deserve a nice long rest.

As for the Vasquez-Marquez specifics, I thought the decision was absolutely correct. I scored the bout 114-111 for Vasquez, with Israel ahead by one point going into the final round and then sealing the deal with the big 12th in which he scored a knockdown. Incidentally, I thought Pat Russell made the right call by determining it was a knockdown in the 12th and final round. That made it a 10-8 round, but even if it had not been scored an actual knockdown, Vasquez won the 12th so big and had Marquez in such desperate trouble that you could easily make a case for it being scored 10-8 anyway. That is how it was going to go down on my scorecard. I was already thinking 10-8 before that final dramatic sequence.

It is interesting that Marquez-Vasquez 3 had controversy over a couple of referee rulings and the final outcome in the same way Corrales-Castillo had controversy over the mouthpiece thing and the decision by Tony Weeks to stop the fight. I thought Weeks did a great job in Corrales-Castillo and I thought Russell did a great job in Marquez-Vasquez,. In each case, the losing side was screaming bloody murder well into the night over their imagined injustice. However, the controversy surrounding Corrales-Castillo finally gave way to the realization that it was a fight for the books and the same thing will happen with Marquez-Vazquez too.