02.11.03 – By Micah Yonkoski: On Saturday Night the long awaited unification battle between Juan Manuel Marquez and Derrick “Prefontaine” Gainer finally took place. When all was said and done, as expected Marquez was the proud owner of two featherweight crowns, but I had to wonder if this fight just really wasn’t meant to happen?
On several occasions in the past couple years this fight was made and for the most part eagerly anticipated. However, for one reason or another, the fight just continued to fall through only to be set up once again. Seriously, Marquez-Gainer has been on-again and off-again more times than Ben and J-Lo’s big day.
Perhaps it was simple misfortune or could it possibly be that the boxing gods were looking out for us? Could it be that they had the forethought and could see the train wreck that lay ahead? Were they doing all things possible to stop us from having to watch that crap performance put forth by the “human cure for insomnia”, Derrick Gainer?
Well, probably not, but it got me wondering as I fought the yawns and frustration during the Gainer track meet. What else was there to do?
End result was a seven round technical decision for Marquez as an unintentional, but much appreciated clash of heads opened a gash above Gainers eye prompting a well received halt to the bout and ending a very pathetic performance from Gainer.
From the onset, Gainer whined about every punch that was anywhere near the waist line and even began to irk Referee Luis Pabon who issued Gainer a “C’mon-C’mon” after he turned to him for help after Marquez ripped into his midsection
It was obvious that Derrick was looking for anything possible that could help him in the ring because actual fighting from Gainer was clearly not on the night’s agenda.
Through no fault of Marquez, who did what he could to make the fight, this was hardly the performance that most thought would begin the cries for Marquez to face the winner of the November 22nd war between featherweight king Marco Barrera and Manny Pacquiao. However, make no mistake about it, Juan Manuel Marquez is nearly as good as Barrera, Pacquiao or Morales and on any given day he could in fact be better.
Before the fight, Gainer spoke about the wonderful charity work that he is deeply involved with and how that gave him so much more than anything that boxing ever could give him. Well, let me be the first to beg Derrick to continue with that fine work and leave the HBO slots to the fighters that actually want to fight, fighters like Juan Manuel Marquez.
All three judges agreed upon the obvious one-sided decision. Two judges gave Marquez every round 70-63 while the other judge somehow saw Gainer winning a round and had Marquez ahead 69-64 at the time of stoppage.