Really cool Halloween collectible, this is a Halloween Nanoforce set, plastic figures that include all the characters from the original 1978 film, the Myers house, the station wagon, the gravestone of Judith Myers, Ghost Bob, and a glow-in-the-dark Michael Myers.
NECA Halloween action figures, you can get action figures for every version of Michael Myers in every film from the franchise. You can also get action figures of Laurie Strode and Dr. Samuel Loomis. NECA does a phenomenal job with their action figures and collectors love these.
Another fascinating fact, the original Michael Myers house from the 1978 film Halloween is located at 1000 Mission Street, South Pasadena, California, 91030. Originally situated at 709 Meridian Ave, the Victorian house was moved to this location to avoid demolition and is now an office building.
Another thing about the Halloween franchise that really made it special is the theme music, that instantly recognizable piano. The iconic Halloween theme song was composed and performed by the film's director, John Carpenter. He created the famous, eerie piano melody in 5/4 time, along with the rest of the synthesizer-driven score, to increase the film's tension. It took him an hour to write it.
I must say, I really like the look of Michael in Halloween: Resurrection, the mask with the angry eyebrows really gave him an intimidating and frightening look.
I guess I'll go ahead and wrap it up on Halloween, I grew up watching horror movies and this is one of my favorite franchises. Michael Myers is one of the all-time great horror movie characters, and as long as they keep making Halloween movies, we will keep watching.
"I believe a strong hook to the body can do more lasting damage than a shot to the jaw. lf you can hit a man high on the rib cage with a lot of strength behind it, you can hamper the movements of his arm on whatever side you hit him. And, knowing this, you can work on that side with comparative freedom. lt affects the arm much more than a direct punch on the arm. A fighter's arms are his defensive armor. Why waste punches on armor? You can only develop a certain amount of toughness on the stomach and upper part of the body. A good punch will get through."
Have Gloves, Will Travel: Journeyman Everett "Bigfoot" Martin, heavyweight who fought from 1984 to 2001 and fought more than a dozen heavyweight champions during his career.
Most fighters who are below the world class level are quickly dismissed as bad, unworthy or otherwise forgettable. What many seem to either forget or not know is that the vast majority of boxers are not on the world class level and will never reach it. They are nevertheless the lifeblood of the sport, and boxing would not exist without them. Sick image of "Bigfoot" Martin holding a road map, signifying his journeyman status.
R.I.P Everett “Bigfoot” Martin: King Of The Journeymen
By: James Slater - 09/01/2022
In sad news, it has been reported that ring warrior Everett “Bigfoot” Martin has passed away at the age of 58. Details are sketchy at the moment but all fans who remember Martin – a man who really did fight ’em all – have been paying their respects to the fighter with the unusual nickname. Going pro down at super-middleweight in August of 1984, Martin would go on to become one of the most tough, resilient, consistently testing heavyweights of the sport. They call guys like Martin “journeymen,” or “trial horses,” but Martin was different in that he could sometimes score the big win. Look at the prominent big men Martin lost to first: George Foreman, Larry Holmes, Wladimir Klitschko (twice), Bonecrusher Smith, Michael Moorer, Lamon Brewster, Riddick Bowe, Herbie Hide, Tony Tubbs, Tony Tucker, Gary Mason, Francesco Damiani, Pierre Coetzer, and Lance Whitaker – with some other notables also being given the Bigfoot test. Stopped just 12 times throughout his 20-39-1(9) pro career (three of these stoppages coming after Martin had turned 35), Martin worked hard in the gym, he had a good chin (a very good chin), he knew some tricks, and he was a man of faith. On his day, Martin could spring the upset, as he did in beating a 19-2 Bert Cooper in June of 1988, or when he decisioned a 37-3 Tim Witherspoon in July of 1992. Martin also had the occasional near-miss, as was the case when he met a 27-0 Moorer in March of 1992; Bigfoot twice dropping the future heavyweight king. Often taking fights on short notice, Martin once faced, back-to-back: Dwight Muhammad Qawi, Foreman, Mason, Coetzer, Damiani, Smith, and Moorer – this during a spell of just 34 months. Truly incredible was Bigfoot. A 17-0 Klitschko was unhappy with his March, 1998 decision win over Martin, and the two met again, with a 25-1 Wladimir managing to get the TKO win in April of 1999. Not too many guys stopped the 5’11” Texan. Slowly, over time, Martin campaigned first at 168, then at light-heavyweight, then as a heavyweight. Not once did Martin exit the ring with a title belt strapped around his waist. But Martin does enjoy a title; as unofficial as it is – that of King of the Journeymen. Again, Martin tested the very best. And he upset a few of them. Our thoughts go out to Martin’s family and friends at this time.
David Haye looked menacing as he scored a ruthless 2nd round TKO of Enzo Maccarinelli while defending The Ring and lineal cruiserweight titles and winning the WBO title at the O2 Arena in London, England on March 8th in 2008.
Maccarinelli seemed to rock Haye in the opening round, but it went nowhere for the Welshman. In the 2nd round, a right hand from Haye bashed Maccarinelli to the deck. Maccarinelli managed to get to his feet, but he was badly hurt and the fight was rightly stopped.
"A lot of people said Enzo could beat me, so this is what had to happen before I moved up to heavyweight and became the undisputed heavyweight champion of the world," Haye said. "There'll be just as many people doubting me as there were doubting me before this fight, saying I'm too small, I've got no chin, no stamina. But I'm 100% certain that I'll achieve more things at heavyweight than I have done at cruiserweight."
Fernando Vargas, aka "El Feroz", aka "The Aztec Warrior" is one of my personal favorite fighters, a real blood-and-guts warrior, didn't have a lot of the skills of some of the fighters of his era, but by God he made up for it with sheer guts, will, and determination. You could stop him but you sure as hell weren't going to knock him out. This quote he made on an ambulance on the way to the hospital after a fight pretty much sums him up.
"I don't remember getting up, but I know if I have a heartbeat in my body, I'm going to get up."
A little tip of the hat to Fernando Vargas, no matter what you threw at the guy, hit him with, he always got back up. The Aztec Warrior, tough as a Dollar Tree steak.
Editor’s Pick: The thrilling career of Fernando Vargas
Fernando Vargas spoke to Craig Scott about the fight that really knocked the stuffing out of him
BN Staff
7th February, 2021
“SOMETIMES – and, I’m gonna be honest and transparent now – once in a blue moon, I can’t remember where I’ve parked. But it doesn’t happen too often. I just have to make sure I know where I’ve parked my car, so that’s a bit difficult for me.”
Those words linger, hanging at the end of the call, unwanted like damaged fruit. The struggles endured by retired fighters are often swept under the carpet; they are almost expected, these haunting tales from men who broke their hands, faces and hearts for our entertainment.
It’s been over a decade since fans of former WBA and IBF super-welterweight champion Fernando Vargas, 26-5 (22), frantically waved their Mexican flags and hoisted full-size, cardboard cut-outs of their champion above their heads, blocking the view of the frustrated ticket holders sat patiently behind them. His legendary, brutal contest with Felix Trinidad, his fight with Golden Boy Oscar De La Hoya, those later bouts with Shane Mosley and Ricardo Mayorga, and that remarkable run of title defences (including Raul Marquez, Ronald ‘Winky’ Wright and Ike Quartey) have cemented his place in boxing’s history.
Oscar De La Hoya
But through it all, Vargas just wants to be remembered as a skilled fighter, who was ready to die in the ring. Life has continued throwing challenges in his direction; he’s succumbed to temptation at times, and has emerged at the other side, a healthy, loving husband and father.
Speaking to Boxing News, the Oxnard, California local opened up on his own struggles after his eventual retirement: “After a while, I started gaining weight because I wasn’t fighting and I wasn’t taking care of myself. It was tough, man. Boxing was my life. That’s how I became an alcoholic, because I thought, ‘What am I gonna do now?’ I knew there was money in the bank; I had so much time on my hands and I thought, ‘Okay, I’ll just drink.’ So, I became an alcoholic – it was stupid.
“Thank god I never did any drugs, but alcohol was my drug. I thank god for keeping me sober now; I have a gym that I opened up which keeps me busy; I have the Fernando Vargas Fighting Foundation, giving inner-city kids a fighting chance. I want to get these kids off the streets; get kids off of drugs, keeping them away from that stuff, and it keeps me busy, I love it. That’s why I can say today, the negatives that I endure, I can turn those to positives.
“It’s difficult, because when you acquire success, then you acquire fame and you acquire wealth. It’s not easy to stay disciplined. I’m five years sober now, and that’s something I’m proud of – I don’t drink anymore. Look at Ricky Hatton, he was depressed too, that’s why he ended up drinking. We try to fill this void in our heart that’s just not there. You can’t do that all the time; you can’t win every time, and depression definitely plays a part in a fighter’s career.”
Still only 42 years old, it’s easy to forget how young Vargas was when he conquered the boxing world. Fighting came easy on the way up; his introduction to the sport was by chance, after another brush with his high school’s authorities. Raised by a single mother and partly by a step-father, the plucky, teenage El Feroz sought his solace in the gym. Street fighting had knocked the fear from his thoughts, and punching vastly more experienced amateurs in the gym came naturally.
When speaking of early life in California, Vargas said he knew, “the very definition of being treated like a step-child”. He wasn’t brought up in a rough area but if you were looking for a fight in Oxnard and crossed paths with Fernando – you were going to get one. After being slapped with another suspension for fighting, he trudged down the school’s long hallway, scanning the walls that were plastered in motivational, extra-curricular material for the normal kids.
That anger and misplaced aggression came from his lack of having a reliable father-figure, he explained, vividly recalling ‘Father & Son’ exhibition days at school, and the pain they used to cause him: “Going to school back then, and seeing all the kids with their fathers; I didn’t have nothing. I didn’t have a dad. I found out where this gym was – it was a local boxing gym – so I went and called their number, and that was it for me.
“I can remember it took me an hour to get to there, and an hour to get back. After a week at the gym, they asked me if I wanted to spar, but I didn’t know anything. I just said, ‘Yeah,’ of course I was gonna spar. They put me in to spar with this dude who was much more experienced; he was going wild, but I remember leaving this kid with a bloody nose.
“They paired people up, and there were two solid kids there, so they were gonna prepare us to spar in a month’s time. The trainers were working with a fighter each, but before the month was up, I ran both of those guys out of the gym; I whooped them all – correct. It wasn’t like I wanted to do this for a little while; I wanted to be huge in this game. I said to myself, ‘Everybody is gonna know my name,’ and thanks to god, that actually happened.”
Vargas became America’s youngest-ever national amateur champion at just 16, before capturing the top spot in four different divisions. He was ranked as the nation’s best amateur at 132lbs and was one of their Olympic boxing representatives for the Atlanta games in 1996. After losing controversially in the second round, he cried on his trip home. He was broken-hearted as the tournament continued without him, crowning Oleg Saitov its gold medallist.
But the young fighter was swiftly reassured by trainer Garcia, who told him, “I shouldn’t worry about the medal – he would fill my belly with gold.” Signing with Main Events, the blue-chip prospect turned professional following his Olympic disappointment. After just 21 months and 14 routine victories, he would challenge IBF king, Yori Boy Campas (in the Mexican’s 75th fight), to become the youngest light-middleweight champion in boxing history.
It wasn’t the first time the two had squared off, with the reigning champion boastfully taunting the young amateur after a session held behind closed doors in a local gym. Fernando remembered that feeling – disrespected and underestimated again, with Campas repeatedly talking between rounds, referring to him as “the Olympian”. He couldn’t do anything about it then, and again, he wept as he made his way back home. But in December of 1998, the roles were reversed. Yori Boy Campas retired in his corner after seven, punishing rounds; the Aztec Warrior was the champion of the world.
“All the nights of going to sleep hungry; all the running and the sparring; all the sacrifices that I made, not going out with friends… Everything was worth it,” exclaimed an elated Vargas. “They carried me on my trainer’s shoulders and I broke down; I was totally flabbergasted. Everything I went through was worth it. It was so great; I was blessed to have the best fans and they have supported me through the thick and the thin of my career.
After he’d beaten Ross Thompson to defend his IBF title for the fifth time, Fernando signed up to fight unbeaten Puerto Rican superstar, Felix Trinidad. It was – as his wife Martha recalls – the most difficult fight she would ever watch, with her husband knocked down on five occasions before being stopped on his feet in the 12th round.
“She saw me as an amateur and she knew that nobody had ever beaten me,” Vargas recalled. “That fight was the first time that she’d seen me being beaten like that. I got up – it wasn’t really a knockout – I ended every one of my fights on my feet, but that was the most difficult for her. Every fight before, after the rounds were done, I’d look at her and I’d wink my eye at her, like, ‘I got this baby, don’t worry.’ But in that fight, I didn’t do that anymore. I was so out of it.
Felix Trinidad
“It took everything out of me. I’m gonna be honest with you, I don’t remember the whole fight. I only remember bits and pieces of the fight; I remember thinking, ‘Man, this guy hits like a tonne of bricks,’ and I didn’t even know he’d knocked me down five times. When I was in the ambulance with my wife, I thought I only went down that one time, so I asked her if it looked bad when I went down. She said, ‘Baby, you got up every time,’ I said, ‘What the f**k? How many times did I go down?’
“It was tough to come back; I felt like I let my people down. People would say, ‘Hey, everybody loves you,’ but, how can they love me? How can they love me if I’ve lost? They were still my Mexican people, and they had respect for the way I thought. That support was amazing, man. Grown men were crying, I’d never seen anything like that in my life – people tell me that my defeats were like wins.”
For boxers, defeat never feels like victory. That hand, left stranded by its waist as the opponent’s is raised aloft in celebration, becomes idle. The walk from the ring to the backstage area seems painfully slow, despite thoughts racing with every stride; should have, could have, but didn’t. The echoed cheers and chants from behind the walls of the changing room, the spoils of victory for the better man, pierce any silence or time for reflection. The room seems bigger than it was before the fight, or maybe it was just busier? That is losing in boxing.
Vargas fought another 10 times after losing to Trinidad, adding six wins and suffering four defeats against some of the sport’s biggest names. He made the walk for the last time in 2007, tackling Nicaraguan wild man Ricardo Mayorga, losing on points. By that time, the fire didn’t burn the same, and the hungry kid who used to fight on the streets of Oxnard had already become extremely successful.
Now, he lives through the eyes of his children – particularly his three sons, Amado, Emiliano and Fernando Jnr. All three are set to fight professionally, with Fernando Snr leading from the front as their head trainer. It wasn’t originally a part of the Vargas family plan: “I know what this sport can do. This is the hurt business and we’re playing with people’s lives. People can lose their lives, our lives could be taken themselves, and so I didn’t want my kids to fight.”
All three have been sparring with some of the sport’s best talents, and look set to become top fighters in their own right. Fernando was just delighted to be with his boys, strengthening their relationship. His wife Martha spoke of her complete trust in their father’s ability to keep them safe, although she worried, as she would when her husband used to compete. Their bond, 27 years on, is both strong and inspiring.
As Vargas talks about his health now, 13 years on from his last fight, he begins to openly discuss visits to the doctors and certain exercises designed for brain stimulation and memory. How does he feel? Fine. He feels good, though he’s not stupid. It’s the little things – like forgetting where he’s parked the car – that still worry him.
Fernando Vargas loved and appreciated everything about his career in boxing – it seems only fair that the sport and all of those involved return the favour for one of its truly fearless warriors. “This is the riskiest sport ever; the most dangerous sport ever. Any punch could be the last punch you ever take, so it’s tough. But it’s the sport that I love and I don’t regret anything at all.”
This is one of the most savage boxing photos ever, Fernando Vargas with the swollen eye. He suffered a severely swollen left eye in his first fight against Shane Mosley on February 25, 2006, at the Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas. The fight was stopped in the 10th round due to the injury.
21-year old Fernando Vargas won the IBF light middleweight title on December 12, 1998, by defeating Luis Ramón "Yori Boy" Campas via a 7th-round technical knockout (TKO) in Atlantic City, New Jersey, on December 12th in 1998. He subsequently made several successful defenses of this title, including notable wins against Ronald "Winky" Wright and Ike Quartey.
After boxing carefully and not opening up much, Vargas opened a cut over Campas' eye in round 3 and clearly hurt him with a right hand. From that point on it was target practice. Vargas broke Campas' nose and cut him on the lips in addition to the cut near his eye. After round 7, Campas signaled to his corner that he had enough.
"I knew coming into the fight that he'd be easy to hit," Vargas said. "Campas is like an old car. It looks good on the outside, but on the inside, it has a million miles on it."
Fernando Vargas was thrown to the wolves early in his career, Winky Wright, Ike Quartey, Felix Trinidad, Shane Mosley, Oscar De La Hoya, that's one hell of a gauntlet. One thing about Vargas though, he was an "anyone, anytime, anyplace" fighter, ducked no one. He was also exciting, win or lose he came to fight. The fans appreciate fighters like that, sometimes greatness isn't measured by a fighter's wins and losses, but by the entertainment value they provide for the fans, guys that bring it and fight their guts out.
Fernando Vargas made a close and disputed third defense of the IBF junior middleweight title with a 12 round majority decision over Winky Wright at the Chinook Winds Casino in Lincoln City, Oregon on December 4th in 1999.
Vargas was a young, undefeated former Olympian, and he'd made two solid defenses of the belt. He also hadn't yet gone the distance in a fight. Wright had a few losses on his record, but he was a cagey fighter with a very difficult style that Vargas had a difficult time solving.
Wright had several moments in the middle rounds, and in round 9 he knocked Vargas' mouthpiece out with a combination. But Vargas managed to rock Wright a handful of times and close stronger in the last few rounds, clearly getting better work done down the stretch.
"I did something you have to do, and that's close the show," Vargas said. "You have to bite down. You have to learn a lot of things from each fight."
Fernando Vargas vs. Ike "Bazooka" Quartey, billed as Two Warriors, One War, and this fight lived up to the billing, it was a slugfest. It took place on April 15, 2000, at Mandalay Bay Events Center, Paradise, Nevada. Quartey was known for his power and poleaxe jab, dangerous fighter was Quartey. Oscar De La Hoya once said that the hardest he's ever been hit was by Ike Quartey.
Vargas started the fight fast and aggressively, as expected from the young, powerful fighter. He immediately looked for an opening, with his signature fast and hard punches. Quartey, on the other hand, played his usual strategy of keeping his distance and using his long poleaxe jab to keep his opponent at bay. Quartey was technical and known for his sturdy defense and controlled attack. In the first three rounds, Vargas was the dominant figure as he landed more punches and kept trying to break through Quartey's defense with powerful straight punches and a combination of body strikes. As the fight progressed, Vargas began to apply more and more pressure. He was able to get Quartey into the corners and deliver hard blows. His speed and aggression made it difficult for Quartey to counter effectively. Quartey tried to time his jabs well and landed some powerful counterattacks, but Vargas was clearly the more dominant force in the ring in the first half of the fight. It looked like Vargas was in control, with his powerful punches testing Quartey's defenses. In the middle rounds, Vargas started to slow down due to the intensity of the fight. He had invested a lot of energy in the first six laps and was starting to show signs of fatigue. Quartey began to better control this phase of the fight. He used his experience to take back control of the ring. His jab was effective in limiting Vargas' movements, and he started hitting more accurately. Despite the intensity of Vargas' attacks, Quartey proved he was still a dangerous opponent. In some of these rounds, Quartey had more success parrying Vargas' attacks and controlling the pace of the fight. Vargas, despite some fatigue, showed his fighting spirit and fought his way back to an impressive finish to the fight. He picked up the pace again, dominating the last few laps. Quartey continued to resist with his strong defense and still tried to counter whenever he got the chance, but he didn't seem to have enough power in the last few rounds to stop Vargas or neutralize his attacks effectively. Vargas' aggression and the power of his punches determined the fight in the final rounds. He continued to increase the pressure and Quartey struggled to keep up with the young fighter's pace. The close fight went for a full twelve rounds. Vargas came out victorious with a unanimous decision with the scores 116-111 twice and 114–113.
Fernando Vargas defended the IBF junior middleweight title with a foul-filled 4th round TKO of Ross Thompson at the Mandalay Bay Resort & Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada on August 26th in 2000.
Despite low expectations, Thompson gave Vargas issues early in the fight as he forced Vargas to lead and tried to counter him. Thompson kept turning his back in the clinch, and Vargas responded by hitting him behind the head.
Vargas began catching up in round 3, but he was deducted a point for hitting behind the head. Vargas then caught Thompson shortly after that with a right hand that sent him down. When Thompson got up and the fight resumed, Vargas went on the attack again and scored another knockdown near the ropes before the bell.
In the opening minute of round 4, Thompson went down again, and Vargas allegedly spit on him as he was down. Thompson, appearing angry, wobbled and somewhat confused, got up again only to be swarmed with more punches and stopped.
"I had him hurt, so it was a matter of waiting for a good shot," Vargas said. "I had to show him what type of fighter I was. He said I was a chump. He was definitely trying to psyche himself up. Now we're moving on to bigger and better things."
It's interesting, Fernando Vargas' losses is what really made me a fan of his. Fighters fascinate me for different reasons, technical skills, punching power, defensive abilities, chin, all of these attributes fascinate me. With Fernando Vargas, his refusal to stay down is what gets me. As Vargas himself put it, "If I've got a heartbeat, I'm going to get up." I've been through $hit in my life and man I can relate. When life beats the crap out of you, tries to take you out, and you defiantly refuse to stay down. I've been there. And while Vargas lost to Trinidad, De La Hoya, Mosley and Mayorga, he finished on his feet, and that in itself is it's own badge of honor. Vargas vs Trinidad on December 2nd, 2000, at Mandalay Bay in Vegas was one heck of a fight, Vargas should have been done in round 1 after being hurt by a Trinidad left hook, but Vargas' heart made it a fight to remember.
The Felix Trinidad-Fernando Vargas classic, 25 years later
Published Tue Dec 2, 2025
By: Eric Raskin
The greatest fight in junior middleweight history.
The high point of a Hall of Fame career.
The reason one fighter fell short of a Hall of Fame career.
The perfect fight at the perfect time.
Too much, too soon.
The junior middleweight championship fight between Felix Trinidad and Fernando Vargas at Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas 25 years ago today, on December 2, 2000, could rightly be described in all of the above ways. Which one-liner deserves the emphasis? Which is its legacy?
A quarter-century later, that all remains a matter of perspective.
Who do you think of first: the man whose power prevailed or the man whose heart made it a war?
What do you picture first: Trinidad jumping on the ropes in premature triumph twice or Vargas climbing off the deck in dazed defiance four times?
And what is your opinion: that Vargas was rushed into the fight or that Trinidad was always going to be a notch above him?
This is either the story of a Puerto Rican icon prevailing in his most grueling challenge, displaying all the power, resilience and guile – and the trademark punch – that made him great … or it’s the story of a Mexican-American warrior solidifying enduring popularity while shaving years off his athletic prime by refusing to stay down.
Of course, in some measure – perhaps equal measure – it is both of those things. And whichever fighter you think of first, Trinidad-Vargas is an absolute classic that would have been 2000’s Fight of the Year if not for Erik Morales and Marco Antonio Barrera finding each other.
It was the second-best fight of the year 2000, perhaps a top-10 fight of the 2000s so far and probably the finest battle ever at 154lbs (unless you think Jarrett Hurd vs. Erislandy Lara surpassed it in 2018, which I do not) – and it’s crazy to think how close Trinidad-Vargas came to being over 11 rounds sooner than it was, which would have meant none of those superlatives.
In 2009, while compiling an article series for HBO’s website on the 10 best HBO fights of that decade, I asked Felix Trinidad Snr – “Tito’s” father and head trainer – if the 12th-round KO of Vargas was his son’s greatest win. He said the victory that meant the most was the controversial decision in 1999 over Oscar De La Hoya. But …
“In terms of the drama, and the attraction of the fight, the Vargas fight was the best fight, in that it produced Tito showing his great heart of a champion,” Trinidad Snr said.
The 27-year-old Trinidad entered the ring that night with a record of 38-0 (31 KOs), including 18-0 in title fights. He’d reigned for more than six years at welterweight, capped with the disputed majority decision over De La Hoya, then made the probably overdue decision to go up to junior middle. And his Y2K campaign had been magnificent. He battered ’96 U.S. Olympic gold medalist David Reid. He obliterated Mamadou Thiam in three rounds. And that set up a major pay-per-view showdown with Reid’s Olympic teammate Vargas.
Vargas, five days shy of his 23rd birthday, scarcely had more professional fights than Trinidad had title fights. He was 20-0 (18 KOs) and, in his previous three fights, mirrored Trinidad’s run over the same stretch. “El Feroz” won a disputed majority decision over future Hall of Famer Ronald “Winky” Wright in December ’99. Then he scored a career-best victory over Ike Quartey. And then he dispatched Ross Thompson in four rounds to set up the clash he’d been calling for, to determine who was the king of the 154lbs division.
“It was clear that [promoter] Main Events was rushing Fernando,” longtime HBO blow-by-blow man Jim Lampley told me in 2009. “And they were rushing Fernando because they wanted him and them to make whatever money he was going to make in the ring before he got into so much trouble outside the ring that it would end his career.”
Yes, there was a pending legal case against Vargas stemming from a 1999 assault charge. But that was only a minor factor, then-Main Events matchmaker Carl Moretti told me in a 2018 podcast interview. “The opportunity to fight Trinidad and the size event that it was and the money involved dictated more,” he said.
Lampley’s former broadcast mate Larry Merchant is more aligned with Moretti: “Many people say he was rushed,” Merchant said in ’09. “I never bought into that, because at the end of the day the idea is to make money, and he had an opportunity to make an awful lot of money, and he did.”
Vargas himself may not be the most reliable, impartial source as to whether he was rushed, but his 2009 comments are telling just the same: “I asked for it. I’m the one that wanted it. I said before that this Mexican wasn’t going to run, and I didn’t run.”
It also must be noted that it was a different time in terms of how quickly top American Olympic prospects were moved. Vargas and Floyd Mayweather both won alphabet belts in 1998, just two years and change after competing in the Atlanta Olympics, and Reid won his in March ’99. Vargas was not an outlier in being eager to challenge himself against pound-for-pound elites so soon after turning pro the way he would be in 2025.
And the Trinidad-Vargas fight was viewed as a near pick-’em coming in. The Californian was only a very slight +140 underdog at the Las Vegas sportsbooks. An HBO web poll the day of the fight found 56% of respondents picking Trinidad. When host James Brown put HBO analyst Emanuel Steward’s feet to the fire moments before the ring entrances, Steward pulled his feet away and said, “This is the first fight in my life that I cannot pick a winner.”
It took all of 21 seconds after the opening bell for it to stop looking like a toss-up. Vargas had the majority of the crowd of 10,067 at the Mandalay Bay Events Center on his side during the introductions, but it was Trinidad’s fans making all the noise when he hurt Vargas with the first serious left hook he threw, crashing it into the hinge of El Feroz’s jaw. A mere 26 ticks had come off the clock when Vargas hit the canvas for the first knockdown of his career.
Vargas, who later told me Trinidad’s punches “felt like fuckin’ baseball bats,” waded right back into battle still damaged, and Tito knew it and put him down again with another hook, this one on the point of the chin. As referee Jay Nady began to count over Vargas, the Puerto Rican star hopped onto the ropes in a neutral corner, believing, some 45 seconds into the fight, that it was over.
“I thought that the fight was going to end very soon,” Trinidad told me through a translator in 2009. “When I get to the ropes, it’s like a custom. People tell me, ‘Don’t waste energy jumping on the ropes. You are losing energy, don’t do that.’ But I trust in my conditioning. When I floored him two times, I was going to destroy him, to end the fight. I got a little wild. He was hurt, but he made it through the round.”
Vargas did indeed make it through the round – fighting flat-footed the rest of the way, but ducking punches reasonably well, seeming mostly recovered (at least until he walked to a neutral corner at the bell).
It’s easy to forget this now, armed with the knowledge that Vargas was stopped in four of his five defeats, but prior to facing Trinidad, there was no reason to think Vargas had anything short of a stellar chin.
A jab appeared to buzz Vargas again in the second. But then he settled in. The third round was notable mostly for the thumb of Vargas’ left glove causing Trinidad’s right eye to swell and for Tito getting a warning for a low blow, allowing Vargas two minutes of much-needed rest.
Through three rounds, the story had been Trinidad’s sensational start and Vargas’ admirable recovery. But there was not yet any reason to believe we had a real fight on our hands. Twenty-seven seconds into the fourth round, Vargas dropped Trinidad with a left hook – the fourth knockdown of the Puerto Rican’s career. And we had a real fight on our hands.
Tito got up and looked steady, but his subsequent actions suggested he was either a little buzzed or just wanted to take an extra measure to slow Vargas’ momentum. Trinidad fired off a left hand below the belt. Nady penalized him one point, and now the two minutes Vargas took to shake it off represented a break Trinidad likely welcomed.
“To me, it looked in the first minute and a half of the fourth round like Fernando had made this amazing transformation from having been lost at sea and too callow for this experience in the first round, and suddenly he was controlling Trinidad,” Lampley said in 2009. He proceeded to call Trinidad’s low punch “the most calculated and intentional and devastatingly effective low blow I ever saw.”
Trinidad objected to that characterization.
“I’m going to tell you right now that it was accidental,” the retired three-division ex-champ said nine years after facing Vargas. “I have never used dirty tactics in a fight.”
Whatever the intention, the knockdown and point deduction made it an even fight, 36-36, through four rounds. Vargas appeared the more energetic and accurate puncher in the fifth. Trinidad answered with two-fisted power shots in an outstanding sixth round that saw both men engaging in high-level, close-range combat, displaying both defense and aggression – matching the quality of the action in the first Morales-Barrera fight 10 months earlier, if not quite matching the pace.
Trinidad lost another point in Round 7 on a punch that replays showed landed on the beltline. For those who scored the round for Trinidad but then deducted that point to make it a 9-9 round, it was plausibly a 64-64 fight through seven rounds, a score I can’t recall seeing in any other fight I’ve covered.
But even if the fight was knotted up on the cards, Trinidad was gathering momentum. In fact, point deductions aside, he swept the sixth through 10th rounds on all cards.
In the midst of that came a Round of the Year contender in the ninth. Trinidad wobbled Vargas with a long right hand. El Feroz fired back with hooks upstairs and down. The final minute was pure war. CompuBox stats said they tied with 32 punches landed apiece over the three minutes.
Vargas lost a point of his own for a low blow in the 10th, and it was increasingly obvious that he was wearing down. Papa Trinidad told his son after that round, “He’s yours. He’s got his mouth open, and he’s tired.”
But Vargas, his left eye now swelling, wasn’t quite done. In the final five seconds of a close 11th, he landed a series of clean shots, making Trinidad’s legs dance ever so slightly. Both men thrusted a fist in the air when the bell rang to end the penultimate round.
As in the opening round, though, Trinidad, the best left-hooker of his era, struck early in the 12th. It was a right hand that froze Vargas, setting him up for the colossal hook that caused his head to bobble as he melted to the canvas. For the second time in the fight, Trinidad leapt on the ropes, thinking the job was done.
But again, Vargas showed heart, getting right up and bouncing on his toes. And again, Tito clipped him on the chin with a left hook and put him right back down. The fight was well out of reach and either Nady or Vargas’ corner could reasonably have stopped it, but it didn’t end until 1:33 of the round, Nady waving it off just as Vargas was crumpling to the canvas for a fifth time courtesy of a right hand.
Maybe Trinidad’s scaling of the ropes after the initial knockdown was a bit premature, but his father believed the second knockdown of the round should have spelled the end.
“I believe that they should have protected Vargas,” Trinidad Snr said in 2009. “Eduardo Garcia is a great trainer, but ultimately, Vargas was not protected. He should have been protected in that fight. Not only the corner, but the referee also. The referee should have protected Vargas. When those things are taking place inside the ring, you have to think about not only the punches your fighter is receiving, but also, who is the person throwing those punches?
“Vargas was a great champion, but Vargas didn’t have anything at that point, after the second knockdown [of the 12th round]. He was totally unable to defend himself.”
In 2018, during a podcast interview primarily focused on his 2002 fight against De La Hoya but also touching on what happened against Trinidad, Vargas admitted, “I only remember bits and pieces of the fight. On the way to the hospital, after the fight, I was in the ambulance with my [future] wife. And I asked my wife, I was in and out, in and out, so, I go, ‘Baby, did it look bad, when I went down?’ She goes, ‘You got up every time.’ I said, ‘What the fuck are you talking about? What do you mean I got up every time?’ … I didn’t know that I got knocked down five times.”
That punishing night did not mark the end of Vargas’ career as a top-flight fighter, but it’s certainly reasonable to observe that he was never the same, particularly in terms of punch resistance. He suffered a troubling knockdown in his next fight, against Wilfredo Rivera. He was stopped in the 11th by De La Hoya. He was stopped twice by Shane Mosley. In his final fight, he was knocked down twice en route to a decision loss to the limited Ricardo Mayorga.
I asked Vargas in ’09 if the Trinidad fight took something out of him.
“Honestly, I think it did,” he said. “Because I never got hurt before, and after that fight, the punches started taking their effects quick.”
In 2018, he added, “Do I feel that, if I had not [taken] that fight, I would have lasted longer in boxing? Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely.”
Trinidad said the same, in a way that Vargas could perceive as complimentary.
“You can see Vargas was different,” Tito said. “There was one Vargas before fighting me. There was another Vargas after that fight. I’m sure that if Vargas never fought me, and he fought against all the fighters that he fought after me, Vargas could have beaten all of them. … He could have knocked all of them out – De La Hoya, Mosley – if he had never fought me.”
Merchant wasn’t of the same belief when we spoke in 2009.
“Did it ruin the rest of his career, or did it just expose certain limitations?” Merchant asked. “I think he had certain limitations, but through his youth and ambition and hunger and drive, he was able to battle through them.”
Merchant added that he didn’t feel it was a mistake for Vargas to take the Trinidad fight so young. If he’d waited another year or two, the opportunity and payday might not have been there for him. And if the fight had still come together later, “probably the same thing would have happened in the fight,” he said.
Vargas made plenty of money in his 11-year pro career (an estimated $25 million in total purses) and engaged in several major fights after Trinidad – and accomplished enough to at least get his name on the International Boxing Hall of Fame ballot.
“I think that at the end of the day, at the end of the career, he just was not one of those super-elite fighters,” Merchant said. “I think that Trinidad and Oscar and Shane were just a little too good for him. But a lot of fighters would have settled for his career.”
Trinidad, meanwhile, did put together a Hall of Fame career, entering alongside his rival De La Hoya in 2014, the first year of eligibility for both of them.
And Tito was going in on the first ballot with or without the Vargas fight. But Lampley is among those who thinks December 2, 2000, at Mandalay Bay was Tito’s finest hour.
“The De La Hoya victory is still open to philosophical and tactical debate,” Lampley said, whereas “this was a rampaging, big-hitting puncher’s triumph over a kid with a world of talent and potential. It was a big credibility-builder for Felix.”
Among other things, it secured for him The Ring’s Fighter of the Year award for 2000. I was the managing editor of the magazine at the time, and was in Vegas to present whichever boxer prevailed with a Fighter of the Year belt at the post-fight press conference.
King Trinidad Raskin
Vargas had the Quartey and Thompson wins coming in. Trinidad had the Reid and Thiam victories. Our editorial staff agreed that if either man won without controversy, there could be no reasonable opportunity for anyone to surpass him for top honors for the year.
We had two separate nameplates made, and I snapped the correct one onto the centerpiece of the belt. I called Editor-in-Chief Nigel Collins to quickly confirm the decision and made my way to the presser.
When Trinidad emerged from his dressing room after a long delay, his swollen eyes hidden behind dark shades, Don King Productions publicist Alan Hopper summoned me to the dais to present the belt.
And King proceeded to announce that a representative of The Ring was there to honor Trinidad as the No. 1 fighter in the world, pound-for-pound.
That was not what the belt said, nor what our pound-for-pound rankings said, but I was given no opportunity to speak into the microphone – it was all I could do to get myself a 10-second window to hand Tito the belt before the junior middleweight champ began speaking.
As Trinidad spoke, I informed King that the belt was for Fighter of the Year, not pound-for-pound supremacy. King nodded and turned his attention away from me in a way that effectively said, “I said what I said, now get off my dais.”
So I returned to my seat facing the dais and listened as Trinidad intermittently spoke in Spanish and shed tears, emotionally and physically drained.
He had assumed for a fleeting moment that he was on his way to one of the shortest, easiest nights of his career. Instead he endured one of the longest and hardest.
The result was – among other things – the greatest fight in junior middleweight history, the high point of a Hall of Fame career and the perfect fight at the perfect time.
A couple of sweet Fernando Vargas trading cards. This is the 2020 Leaf Happy Holidays Purple Crystal auto /7. These cards come in different colors, Red, Pink, Green, Blue, etc. I had a chance to get the Superfractor 1/1 for this card a while back on eBay but somebody got to it first.
Like I said before, Fernando Vargas was never in a dull fight, and his bout with Oscar De La Hoya in 2002 was an apocalyptic encounter, the whole back story to the bout was made-for-TV drama. There was indeed bad blood between the two.
Golden Days and Ferocious Nights: De La Hoya Vs. Vargas in Review
California versus California was the flavour in the super-welterweight division throughout 2002.
By: Tommy G. Robins
Mar 07, 2025
There is nothing more integral to the consumption of American boxing than spite.
Arguably, it is the primary ingredient; the central ingredient that keeps the business from burning in a burial heap. At every level, the fuel is spite.
Fans and spectators regurgitate spite. Pundits and other associated mouth-pieces consider a degree of spite in their speech and opinions. Of course, fighters themselves thrive in the realms of spite and hate.
Whilst many, many fights are made to pit one athlete against another in the pursuit of sporting greatness, there are a rare few that are more primal in their construction.
There are fights that are worthy of the scathing description associated with the very word fight. These aren’t matches; there is often too much of every heightened emotion one can think of to be described in this way.
One of these bloodied, blood-fuelled blood-feuds took place in 2002, as the heat and hardship of an August summer gave way to the more languid autumn of an early September month.
Two men, united by a state and separated by a fierce and undying rivalry, shared the ring over twelve rounds for the WBC, WBA, IBA and vacant The Ring Magazine Super-Welterweight titles.
Three titles and eleven rounds were the total sum of the sheer carnage of Oscar De La Hoya (39-6) versus Fernando Vargas (26-5).
Hate is not something grown within a day. The underlying seed of hate is time. This is something seen throughout history.
Of course, more general history, and certainly, boxing history.
These rivalries, born out of geography or politics or incident, are generated over a sustained length. Like many boxers, the rivalry that grew from one young man to another originated from the amateur code.
According to Vargas, their years of disgust and vitriolic insults worthy of a man christened as ‘Ferocious’, all began with a laugh.
Sources state that, whilst training, Vargas collapsed into a snowbank after losing his footing. The incident was met with a hearty laugh from ‘The Golden Boy’, who kept going, rather than helping his Californian brethren.
This reaction, as extreme as it might be, was attributed to a difficult childhood by Vargas.
As quoted by Sky Sports from an interview given on the Toe2Toe Podcast, Vargas said:
I never had a dad. My dad was never there. My dad was a drug addict.
My dad died a drug addict.
Vargas instead found solace in the boxing gym, on a path that would lead to Oscar De La Hoya and the position of being the best at super-welterweight.
‘The Golden Boy’ was the darling of American fight sports.
Handsome, defined features that provided De La Hoya with ample promotion combined with a methodical and exciting ring presence that saw De La Hoya overwhelm the professional leagues, ‘The Golden Boy’ was a suitable moniker in every regard.
Even as the champagne and cocaine 1990’s gave way to the brutality of the 2000’s, De La Hoya was one of the most well-known boxers on the planet.
Performances against Julio Cesar Chavez (107-6-2), Pernell Whitaker (40-4-1) and Hector Camacho (79-6-3) saw De La Hoya transcend his Olympic-winning amateur career and become a four division world champion.
Meanwhile, Vargas was very much the antithesis.
If De La Hoya represented the opulence of the United States throughout the 1990’s, with tanned skin and bright, blinding smiles, then Vargas embraced the harsh and intimidating attitude era that was about to come.
By 2002, De La Hoya had fought thirty-six times, becoming a four weight world champion and a box office draw. Meanwhile, Vargas had also fought in the Olympic Games, losing in the second portion of the 1996 Atlanta Olympics in a controversial and divisive decision.
This is to say that, where Oscar naturally flourished, Vargas was severely plagued by the shadow of something that had always followed him; trouble.
As a professional, Vargas sought to catch up to his rival - not only to achieve the same heights as ‘The Golden Boy’, but to enact some kind of one-sided revenge.
In only his fifteenth fight, Vargas captured the IBF World Super-Welterweight title by exorcising demons against ‘Yori Boy’ Campas (108-17-3), who had gotten the better of Vargas years prior during sparring.
Vargas, then only twenty-one years old, was violent and aggressive in his approach. Unlike the pedagogically perfect De La Hoya, Vargas ached for blood. Campas retired in the seventh.
By 2002, ‘Ferocious’ Fernando had caught up. Only a single loss, to Felix Trinidad (42-3), tarnished his resume. Seizing the lesser IBA World Super-Welterweight title, the stage was finally prepared for a finely-aged rivalry to finally end.
True finality.
At the very end of 2001, negotiations fell apart. Two weeks of talks throughout the seasonally bleak month resulted in nothing; there was no White Christmas for either man in California.
Afterwards, negotiations would flair and falter.
Their communications almost resembled two factions in a medieval war, attempting to divide and conquer. In the early half of the year, they agreed; May 4th would be the date.
That day, as average as any other in the American psyche, came and went without incident. Oscar De La Hoya, a month out from the initial date, withdrew. The cause was a common one for a man of his vocation - an injury to his left hand.
The event was billed as Bad Blood. If anyone knows anything about bad blood, it does not dissipate without conflict. A week later, the date was rescheduled. It had to be.
Both men would suffer through an oppressive summer to meet at the Mandalay Bay Events Center in Las Vegas on the 14th of September 2002.
The stage was set. The men were ready. Years flowed through their veins more than boiling, begging blood. In the eyes of Vargas, this was revenge. For De La Hoya, who had found the antics of Vargas to be extreme, this was business.
Introductions had finished and talking, a crucial factor in their rivalry, had ceased. The bell sounded and their conflict erupted, all at once.
True conflict.
Their war of words was wonderfully vicious, but their fisticuffs was something otherworldly.
At twenty-nine years of age and sporting the weight of 154 lbs, far from his debut weight of 134 lbs, De La Hoya was coming into the later stages of the prizefighting cycle.
In contrast, the exhaustive preparation put forward by the consistent 154 lbs-er Vargas was evident; he was in the fighting shape of his life, all in devotion of a man he had so much disdain for.
This possession not only seized his body, but his mentality. It was something that won him a smattering of the early rounds. ‘Ferocious’ was an apt word in every sense.
Oscar De La Hoya, the more technical, pure boxer of the two, very much fought at the whim of Vargas in those early rounds. Pressure was contained into pushes that saw ‘The Golden Boy’ on the back foot.
It was a wonderful ruckus for a man with so much anger and chaos on the mind. However, it might’ve been too much. After all, Oscar was in a state of tranquility - despite what might’ve been shown on the surface.
Naturally tactile and naturally an intelligent counter-puncher, De La Hoya slowly affirmed his position in the contest. The physical pressures of the Mandalay Bay - the heat, the light, the spectators - they were nothing in comparison to Vargas.
And yet, by the fourth, De La Hoya crept into the competition.
The fifth round was a spectacle. Vargas had De La Hoya hurt. Really, truly hurt. The sort of hurt that is felt in memory, one that is never relieved. Vargas drew blood from De La Hoya; a pathway originating from his nose.
Entering the sixth round, however, things changed. Whilst that previous pain is never relieved, Vargas did relieve the pressure; he was fading.
The constant experience of being a four division champion bled - ironically for a man bleeding through his nostrils - into the fight. With Vargas in a state of oncoming exhaustion, ‘The Golden Boy’ shone through.
Courage kept Vargas upright and swinging, but skill and knowledge kept fuelling De La Hoya; some of these attributes burn brighter than others.
Round ten was the definitive point at which the contest became one under the domain of De La Hoya. Repeatedly throughout said round, the left hook was something like an illegal weapon in regards to the damage that it inflicted upon Vargas.
Throughout the three minute stretch, it would drill and dig and burrow into Vargas - so much so that it cut the ferociously fading Fernando. Both men had drawn blood.
It is not often that the billing of a fight accurately correlates to the action on display within the zone of combat. This time, however, it was dead right.
More than a visual indication of damage for De La Hoya, ‘The Golden Boy’ could smell his victory in their shared air and taste the finish with every shallow gulp of it. The eleventh round was prove to be the last.
Oscar De La Hoya was golden in that last stanza.
At 1:48 of their initial championship round, it was over. The four division champion was not a man in those moments, but a driven force. Bad Blood had come to an end.
Finality.
In the aftermath, it failed to truly vanish.
Both men received swaths of praise for their performances. Vargas was hailed for his initial performance and willingness in those later rounds to weather the storm. De La Hoya, meanwhile, was applauded by those who saw ‘The Golden Boy’ as a relic.
Together, they had done something marvellous.
Yet, Vargas was not satisfied.
De La Hoya often tells an anecdote in which, after the fight, he booked an entire restaurant to hold a private audience with Vargas, with the desire for peace.
However, Vargas verbally berated the man who had beaten him, demanding a rematch and insulting ‘The Golden Boy’. Their bad blood, at least in the eyes of Vargas, was very much still flowing.
Only in more contemporary times, with both men retired, misshapen caricatures of their prior selves, have they discovered a pathway to peace. Their children forged friendship where their fathers forged rivalry and hatred.
Said unlikely friendship provided the means for the two to finally dim the flame of their decades of animosity.
Me and Oscar are friends now. We are absolutely at peace.
It is evident that those ferocious nights, such as the one that finally saw them collide in 2002, have given way to golden days, where men can put aside their divisions and learn.
Although, their eleven rounds still stand as a monument to human drive, emotion and spirit, in every sense of the word.
Look at these images of Fernando Vargas hitting Oscar De La Hoya in the ribs with a vicious body shot, the expression on Oscar's face. Them body shots ain't no joke, they hurt like crazy. Great photos.
Comments
Really cool Halloween collectible, this is a Halloween Nanoforce set, plastic figures that include all the characters from the original 1978 film, the Myers house, the station wagon, the gravestone of Judith Myers, Ghost Bob, and a glow-in-the-dark Michael Myers.
Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers (1988) poster.
A poster for Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers (1989).
A poster for Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers (1995), this was the last Halloween film Donald Pleasance appeared in as Dr. Samuel Loomis.
Halloween H20 (1998) poster.
Halloween Resurrection (2002) poster.
It's fascinating, Michael Myers mask changed over the years, his mask was different in every film.
Epic scene from Halloween 4, when Jaime walks through her dark room and a lightning flash reveals Michael Myers in the mirror standing in the room.
NECA Halloween action figures, you can get action figures for every version of Michael Myers in every film from the franchise. You can also get action figures of Laurie Strode and Dr. Samuel Loomis. NECA does a phenomenal job with their action figures and collectors love these.
Another fascinating fact, the original Michael Myers house from the 1978 film Halloween is located at 1000 Mission Street, South Pasadena, California, 91030. Originally situated at 709 Meridian Ave, the Victorian house was moved to this location to avoid demolition and is now an office building.
The Michael Myers house today.
Another thing about the Halloween franchise that really made it special is the theme music, that instantly recognizable piano. The iconic Halloween theme song was composed and performed by the film's director, John Carpenter. He created the famous, eerie piano melody in 5/4 time, along with the rest of the synthesizer-driven score, to increase the film's tension. It took him an hour to write it.
I must say, I really like the look of Michael in Halloween: Resurrection, the mask with the angry eyebrows really gave him an intimidating and frightening look.
Haddonfield was a great name for the town in Halloween.
I guess I'll go ahead and wrap it up on Halloween, I grew up watching horror movies and this is one of my favorite franchises. Michael Myers is one of the all-time great horror movie characters, and as long as they keep making Halloween movies, we will keep watching.
"I believe a strong hook to the body can do more lasting damage than a shot to the jaw. lf you can hit a man high on the rib cage with a lot of strength behind it, you can hamper the movements of his arm on whatever side you hit him. And, knowing this, you can work on that side with comparative freedom. lt affects the arm much more than a direct punch on the arm. A fighter's arms are his defensive armor. Why waste punches on armor? You can only develop a certain amount of toughness on the stomach and upper part of the body. A good punch will get through."
Have Gloves, Will Travel: Journeyman Everett "Bigfoot" Martin, heavyweight who fought from 1984 to 2001 and fought more than a dozen heavyweight champions during his career.
Most fighters who are below the world class level are quickly dismissed as bad, unworthy or otherwise forgettable. What many seem to either forget or not know is that the vast majority of boxers are not on the world class level and will never reach it. They are nevertheless the lifeblood of the sport, and boxing would not exist without them. Sick image of "Bigfoot" Martin holding a road map, signifying his journeyman status.
R.I.P Everett “Bigfoot” Martin: King Of The Journeymen
By: James Slater - 09/01/2022
In sad news, it has been reported that ring warrior Everett “Bigfoot” Martin has passed away at the age of 58. Details are sketchy at the moment but all fans who remember Martin – a man who really did fight ’em all – have been paying their respects to the fighter with the unusual nickname. Going pro down at super-middleweight in August of 1984, Martin would go on to become one of the most tough, resilient, consistently testing heavyweights of the sport. They call guys like Martin “journeymen,” or “trial horses,” but Martin was different in that he could sometimes score the big win. Look at the prominent big men Martin lost to first: George Foreman, Larry Holmes, Wladimir Klitschko (twice), Bonecrusher Smith, Michael Moorer, Lamon Brewster, Riddick Bowe, Herbie Hide, Tony Tubbs, Tony Tucker, Gary Mason, Francesco Damiani, Pierre Coetzer, and Lance Whitaker – with some other notables also being given the Bigfoot test. Stopped just 12 times throughout his 20-39-1(9) pro career (three of these stoppages coming after Martin had turned 35), Martin worked hard in the gym, he had a good chin (a very good chin), he knew some tricks, and he was a man of faith. On his day, Martin could spring the upset, as he did in beating a 19-2 Bert Cooper in June of 1988, or when he decisioned a 37-3 Tim Witherspoon in July of 1992. Martin also had the occasional near-miss, as was the case when he met a 27-0 Moorer in March of 1992; Bigfoot twice dropping the future heavyweight king. Often taking fights on short notice, Martin once faced, back-to-back: Dwight Muhammad Qawi, Foreman, Mason, Coetzer, Damiani, Smith, and Moorer – this during a spell of just 34 months. Truly incredible was Bigfoot. A 17-0 Klitschko was unhappy with his March, 1998 decision win over Martin, and the two met again, with a 25-1 Wladimir managing to get the TKO win in April of 1999. Not too many guys stopped the 5’11” Texan. Slowly, over time, Martin campaigned first at 168, then at light-heavyweight, then as a heavyweight. Not once did Martin exit the ring with a title belt strapped around his waist. But Martin does enjoy a title; as unofficial as it is – that of King of the Journeymen. Again, Martin tested the very best. And he upset a few of them. Our thoughts go out to Martin’s family and friends at this time.
"The Pittsburgh Kid" Billy Conn relaxes under a tree with his fishing rod on his lap at his Deerwood Lake training camp in New Jersey in 1946.
Awesome image of Vinny Paz.
Savage image of Vinny Paz.
David Haye looked menacing as he scored a ruthless 2nd round TKO of Enzo Maccarinelli while defending The Ring and lineal cruiserweight titles and winning the WBO title at the O2 Arena in London, England on March 8th in 2008.
Maccarinelli seemed to rock Haye in the opening round, but it went nowhere for the Welshman. In the 2nd round, a right hand from Haye bashed Maccarinelli to the deck. Maccarinelli managed to get to his feet, but he was badly hurt and the fight was rightly stopped.
"A lot of people said Enzo could beat me, so this is what had to happen before I moved up to heavyweight and became the undisputed heavyweight champion of the world," Haye said. "There'll be just as many people doubting me as there were doubting me before this fight, saying I'm too small, I've got no chin, no stamina. But I'm 100% certain that I'll achieve more things at heavyweight than I have done at cruiserweight."
"Little Red" Danny Lopez riding his Kawasaki motorcycle. Lopez had some of the heaviest hands in boxing history, murderous puncher.
Fernando Vargas, aka "El Feroz", aka "The Aztec Warrior" is one of my personal favorite fighters, a real blood-and-guts warrior, didn't have a lot of the skills of some of the fighters of his era, but by God he made up for it with sheer guts, will, and determination. You could stop him but you sure as hell weren't going to knock him out. This quote he made on an ambulance on the way to the hospital after a fight pretty much sums him up.
"I don't remember getting up, but I know if I have a heartbeat in my body, I'm going to get up."
A little tip of the hat to Fernando Vargas, no matter what you threw at the guy, hit him with, he always got back up. The Aztec Warrior, tough as a Dollar Tree steak.
Editor’s Pick: The thrilling career of Fernando Vargas
Fernando Vargas spoke to Craig Scott about the fight that really knocked the stuffing out of him
BN Staff
7th February, 2021
“SOMETIMES – and, I’m gonna be honest and transparent now – once in a blue moon, I can’t remember where I’ve parked. But it doesn’t happen too often. I just have to make sure I know where I’ve parked my car, so that’s a bit difficult for me.”
Those words linger, hanging at the end of the call, unwanted like damaged fruit. The struggles endured by retired fighters are often swept under the carpet; they are almost expected, these haunting tales from men who broke their hands, faces and hearts for our entertainment.
It’s been over a decade since fans of former WBA and IBF super-welterweight champion Fernando Vargas, 26-5 (22), frantically waved their Mexican flags and hoisted full-size, cardboard cut-outs of their champion above their heads, blocking the view of the frustrated ticket holders sat patiently behind them. His legendary, brutal contest with Felix Trinidad, his fight with Golden Boy Oscar De La Hoya, those later bouts with Shane Mosley and Ricardo Mayorga, and that remarkable run of title defences (including Raul Marquez, Ronald ‘Winky’ Wright and Ike Quartey) have cemented his place in boxing’s history.
Oscar De La Hoya
But through it all, Vargas just wants to be remembered as a skilled fighter, who was ready to die in the ring. Life has continued throwing challenges in his direction; he’s succumbed to temptation at times, and has emerged at the other side, a healthy, loving husband and father.
Speaking to Boxing News, the Oxnard, California local opened up on his own struggles after his eventual retirement: “After a while, I started gaining weight because I wasn’t fighting and I wasn’t taking care of myself. It was tough, man. Boxing was my life. That’s how I became an alcoholic, because I thought, ‘What am I gonna do now?’ I knew there was money in the bank; I had so much time on my hands and I thought, ‘Okay, I’ll just drink.’ So, I became an alcoholic – it was stupid.
“Thank god I never did any drugs, but alcohol was my drug. I thank god for keeping me sober now; I have a gym that I opened up which keeps me busy; I have the Fernando Vargas Fighting Foundation, giving inner-city kids a fighting chance. I want to get these kids off the streets; get kids off of drugs, keeping them away from that stuff, and it keeps me busy, I love it. That’s why I can say today, the negatives that I endure, I can turn those to positives.
“It’s difficult, because when you acquire success, then you acquire fame and you acquire wealth. It’s not easy to stay disciplined. I’m five years sober now, and that’s something I’m proud of – I don’t drink anymore. Look at Ricky Hatton, he was depressed too, that’s why he ended up drinking. We try to fill this void in our heart that’s just not there. You can’t do that all the time; you can’t win every time, and depression definitely plays a part in a fighter’s career.”
Still only 42 years old, it’s easy to forget how young Vargas was when he conquered the boxing world. Fighting came easy on the way up; his introduction to the sport was by chance, after another brush with his high school’s authorities. Raised by a single mother and partly by a step-father, the plucky, teenage El Feroz sought his solace in the gym. Street fighting had knocked the fear from his thoughts, and punching vastly more experienced amateurs in the gym came naturally.
When speaking of early life in California, Vargas said he knew, “the very definition of being treated like a step-child”. He wasn’t brought up in a rough area but if you were looking for a fight in Oxnard and crossed paths with Fernando – you were going to get one. After being slapped with another suspension for fighting, he trudged down the school’s long hallway, scanning the walls that were plastered in motivational, extra-curricular material for the normal kids.
That anger and misplaced aggression came from his lack of having a reliable father-figure, he explained, vividly recalling ‘Father & Son’ exhibition days at school, and the pain they used to cause him: “Going to school back then, and seeing all the kids with their fathers; I didn’t have nothing. I didn’t have a dad. I found out where this gym was – it was a local boxing gym – so I went and called their number, and that was it for me.
“I can remember it took me an hour to get to there, and an hour to get back. After a week at the gym, they asked me if I wanted to spar, but I didn’t know anything. I just said, ‘Yeah,’ of course I was gonna spar. They put me in to spar with this dude who was much more experienced; he was going wild, but I remember leaving this kid with a bloody nose.
“They paired people up, and there were two solid kids there, so they were gonna prepare us to spar in a month’s time. The trainers were working with a fighter each, but before the month was up, I ran both of those guys out of the gym; I whooped them all – correct. It wasn’t like I wanted to do this for a little while; I wanted to be huge in this game. I said to myself, ‘Everybody is gonna know my name,’ and thanks to god, that actually happened.”
Vargas became America’s youngest-ever national amateur champion at just 16, before capturing the top spot in four different divisions. He was ranked as the nation’s best amateur at 132lbs and was one of their Olympic boxing representatives for the Atlanta games in 1996. After losing controversially in the second round, he cried on his trip home. He was broken-hearted as the tournament continued without him, crowning Oleg Saitov its gold medallist.
But the young fighter was swiftly reassured by trainer Garcia, who told him, “I shouldn’t worry about the medal – he would fill my belly with gold.” Signing with Main Events, the blue-chip prospect turned professional following his Olympic disappointment. After just 21 months and 14 routine victories, he would challenge IBF king, Yori Boy Campas (in the Mexican’s 75th fight), to become the youngest light-middleweight champion in boxing history.
It wasn’t the first time the two had squared off, with the reigning champion boastfully taunting the young amateur after a session held behind closed doors in a local gym. Fernando remembered that feeling – disrespected and underestimated again, with Campas repeatedly talking between rounds, referring to him as “the Olympian”. He couldn’t do anything about it then, and again, he wept as he made his way back home. But in December of 1998, the roles were reversed. Yori Boy Campas retired in his corner after seven, punishing rounds; the Aztec Warrior was the champion of the world.
“All the nights of going to sleep hungry; all the running and the sparring; all the sacrifices that I made, not going out with friends… Everything was worth it,” exclaimed an elated Vargas. “They carried me on my trainer’s shoulders and I broke down; I was totally flabbergasted. Everything I went through was worth it. It was so great; I was blessed to have the best fans and they have supported me through the thick and the thin of my career.
After he’d beaten Ross Thompson to defend his IBF title for the fifth time, Fernando signed up to fight unbeaten Puerto Rican superstar, Felix Trinidad. It was – as his wife Martha recalls – the most difficult fight she would ever watch, with her husband knocked down on five occasions before being stopped on his feet in the 12th round.
“She saw me as an amateur and she knew that nobody had ever beaten me,” Vargas recalled. “That fight was the first time that she’d seen me being beaten like that. I got up – it wasn’t really a knockout – I ended every one of my fights on my feet, but that was the most difficult for her. Every fight before, after the rounds were done, I’d look at her and I’d wink my eye at her, like, ‘I got this baby, don’t worry.’ But in that fight, I didn’t do that anymore. I was so out of it.
Felix Trinidad
“It took everything out of me. I’m gonna be honest with you, I don’t remember the whole fight. I only remember bits and pieces of the fight; I remember thinking, ‘Man, this guy hits like a tonne of bricks,’ and I didn’t even know he’d knocked me down five times. When I was in the ambulance with my wife, I thought I only went down that one time, so I asked her if it looked bad when I went down. She said, ‘Baby, you got up every time,’ I said, ‘What the f**k? How many times did I go down?’
“It was tough to come back; I felt like I let my people down. People would say, ‘Hey, everybody loves you,’ but, how can they love me? How can they love me if I’ve lost? They were still my Mexican people, and they had respect for the way I thought. That support was amazing, man. Grown men were crying, I’d never seen anything like that in my life – people tell me that my defeats were like wins.”
For boxers, defeat never feels like victory. That hand, left stranded by its waist as the opponent’s is raised aloft in celebration, becomes idle. The walk from the ring to the backstage area seems painfully slow, despite thoughts racing with every stride; should have, could have, but didn’t. The echoed cheers and chants from behind the walls of the changing room, the spoils of victory for the better man, pierce any silence or time for reflection. The room seems bigger than it was before the fight, or maybe it was just busier? That is losing in boxing.
Vargas fought another 10 times after losing to Trinidad, adding six wins and suffering four defeats against some of the sport’s biggest names. He made the walk for the last time in 2007, tackling Nicaraguan wild man Ricardo Mayorga, losing on points. By that time, the fire didn’t burn the same, and the hungry kid who used to fight on the streets of Oxnard had already become extremely successful.
Now, he lives through the eyes of his children – particularly his three sons, Amado, Emiliano and Fernando Jnr. All three are set to fight professionally, with Fernando Snr leading from the front as their head trainer. It wasn’t originally a part of the Vargas family plan: “I know what this sport can do. This is the hurt business and we’re playing with people’s lives. People can lose their lives, our lives could be taken themselves, and so I didn’t want my kids to fight.”
All three have been sparring with some of the sport’s best talents, and look set to become top fighters in their own right. Fernando was just delighted to be with his boys, strengthening their relationship. His wife Martha spoke of her complete trust in their father’s ability to keep them safe, although she worried, as she would when her husband used to compete. Their bond, 27 years on, is both strong and inspiring.
As Vargas talks about his health now, 13 years on from his last fight, he begins to openly discuss visits to the doctors and certain exercises designed for brain stimulation and memory. How does he feel? Fine. He feels good, though he’s not stupid. It’s the little things – like forgetting where he’s parked the car – that still worry him.
Fernando Vargas loved and appreciated everything about his career in boxing – it seems only fair that the sport and all of those involved return the favour for one of its truly fearless warriors. “This is the riskiest sport ever; the most dangerous sport ever. Any punch could be the last punch you ever take, so it’s tough. But it’s the sport that I love and I don’t regret anything at all.”
Love this image of Vargas with the American flags in the background.
This is one of the most savage boxing photos ever, Fernando Vargas with the swollen eye. He suffered a severely swollen left eye in his first fight against Shane Mosley on February 25, 2006, at the Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas. The fight was stopped in the 10th round due to the injury.
21-year old Fernando Vargas won the IBF light middleweight title on December 12, 1998, by defeating Luis Ramón "Yori Boy" Campas via a 7th-round technical knockout (TKO) in Atlantic City, New Jersey, on December 12th in 1998. He subsequently made several successful defenses of this title, including notable wins against Ronald "Winky" Wright and Ike Quartey.
After boxing carefully and not opening up much, Vargas opened a cut over Campas' eye in round 3 and clearly hurt him with a right hand. From that point on it was target practice. Vargas broke Campas' nose and cut him on the lips in addition to the cut near his eye. After round 7, Campas signaled to his corner that he had enough.
"I knew coming into the fight that he'd be easy to hit," Vargas said. "Campas is like an old car. It looks good on the outside, but on the inside, it has a million miles on it."
Fernando Vargas was thrown to the wolves early in his career, Winky Wright, Ike Quartey, Felix Trinidad, Shane Mosley, Oscar De La Hoya, that's one hell of a gauntlet. One thing about Vargas though, he was an "anyone, anytime, anyplace" fighter, ducked no one. He was also exciting, win or lose he came to fight. The fans appreciate fighters like that, sometimes greatness isn't measured by a fighter's wins and losses, but by the entertainment value they provide for the fans, guys that bring it and fight their guts out.
Fernando Vargas made a close and disputed third defense of the IBF junior middleweight title with a 12 round majority decision over Winky Wright at the Chinook Winds Casino in Lincoln City, Oregon on December 4th in 1999.
Vargas was a young, undefeated former Olympian, and he'd made two solid defenses of the belt. He also hadn't yet gone the distance in a fight. Wright had a few losses on his record, but he was a cagey fighter with a very difficult style that Vargas had a difficult time solving.
Wright had several moments in the middle rounds, and in round 9 he knocked Vargas' mouthpiece out with a combination. But Vargas managed to rock Wright a handful of times and close stronger in the last few rounds, clearly getting better work done down the stretch.
"I did something you have to do, and that's close the show," Vargas said. "You have to bite down. You have to learn a lot of things from each fight."
Fernando Vargas vs. Ike "Bazooka" Quartey, billed as Two Warriors, One War, and this fight lived up to the billing, it was a slugfest. It took place on April 15, 2000, at Mandalay Bay Events Center, Paradise, Nevada. Quartey was known for his power and poleaxe jab, dangerous fighter was Quartey. Oscar De La Hoya once said that the hardest he's ever been hit was by Ike Quartey.
Vargas started the fight fast and aggressively, as expected from the young, powerful fighter. He immediately looked for an opening, with his signature fast and hard punches. Quartey, on the other hand, played his usual strategy of keeping his distance and using his long poleaxe jab to keep his opponent at bay. Quartey was technical and known for his sturdy defense and controlled attack. In the first three rounds, Vargas was the dominant figure as he landed more punches and kept trying to break through Quartey's defense with powerful straight punches and a combination of body strikes. As the fight progressed, Vargas began to apply more and more pressure. He was able to get Quartey into the corners and deliver hard blows. His speed and aggression made it difficult for Quartey to counter effectively. Quartey tried to time his jabs well and landed some powerful counterattacks, but Vargas was clearly the more dominant force in the ring in the first half of the fight. It looked like Vargas was in control, with his powerful punches testing Quartey's defenses. In the middle rounds, Vargas started to slow down due to the intensity of the fight. He had invested a lot of energy in the first six laps and was starting to show signs of fatigue. Quartey began to better control this phase of the fight. He used his experience to take back control of the ring. His jab was effective in limiting Vargas' movements, and he started hitting more accurately. Despite the intensity of Vargas' attacks, Quartey proved he was still a dangerous opponent. In some of these rounds, Quartey had more success parrying Vargas' attacks and controlling the pace of the fight. Vargas, despite some fatigue, showed his fighting spirit and fought his way back to an impressive finish to the fight. He picked up the pace again, dominating the last few laps. Quartey continued to resist with his strong defense and still tried to counter whenever he got the chance, but he didn't seem to have enough power in the last few rounds to stop Vargas or neutralize his attacks effectively. Vargas' aggression and the power of his punches determined the fight in the final rounds. He continued to increase the pressure and Quartey struggled to keep up with the young fighter's pace. The close fight went for a full twelve rounds. Vargas came out victorious with a unanimous decision with the scores 116-111 twice and 114–113.
Here are the highlights from Fernando Vargas-Ike Quartey, what a war. You gotta love Vargas, the guy was never in a dull fight.
Fernando Vargas defended the IBF junior middleweight title with a foul-filled 4th round TKO of Ross Thompson at the Mandalay Bay Resort & Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada on August 26th in 2000.
Despite low expectations, Thompson gave Vargas issues early in the fight as he forced Vargas to lead and tried to counter him. Thompson kept turning his back in the clinch, and Vargas responded by hitting him behind the head.
Vargas began catching up in round 3, but he was deducted a point for hitting behind the head. Vargas then caught Thompson shortly after that with a right hand that sent him down. When Thompson got up and the fight resumed, Vargas went on the attack again and scored another knockdown near the ropes before the bell.
In the opening minute of round 4, Thompson went down again, and Vargas allegedly spit on him as he was down. Thompson, appearing angry, wobbled and somewhat confused, got up again only to be swarmed with more punches and stopped.
"I had him hurt, so it was a matter of waiting for a good shot," Vargas said. "I had to show him what type of fighter I was. He said I was a chump. He was definitely trying to psyche himself up. Now we're moving on to bigger and better things."
It's interesting, Fernando Vargas' losses is what really made me a fan of his. Fighters fascinate me for different reasons, technical skills, punching power, defensive abilities, chin, all of these attributes fascinate me. With Fernando Vargas, his refusal to stay down is what gets me. As Vargas himself put it, "If I've got a heartbeat, I'm going to get up." I've been through $hit in my life and man I can relate. When life beats the crap out of you, tries to take you out, and you defiantly refuse to stay down. I've been there. And while Vargas lost to Trinidad, De La Hoya, Mosley and Mayorga, he finished on his feet, and that in itself is it's own badge of honor. Vargas vs Trinidad on December 2nd, 2000, at Mandalay Bay in Vegas was one heck of a fight, Vargas should have been done in round 1 after being hurt by a Trinidad left hook, but Vargas' heart made it a fight to remember.
The Felix Trinidad-Fernando Vargas classic, 25 years later
Published Tue Dec 2, 2025
By: Eric Raskin
The greatest fight in junior middleweight history.
The high point of a Hall of Fame career.
The reason one fighter fell short of a Hall of Fame career.
The perfect fight at the perfect time.
Too much, too soon.
The junior middleweight championship fight between Felix Trinidad and Fernando Vargas at Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas 25 years ago today, on December 2, 2000, could rightly be described in all of the above ways. Which one-liner deserves the emphasis? Which is its legacy?
A quarter-century later, that all remains a matter of perspective.
Who do you think of first: the man whose power prevailed or the man whose heart made it a war?
What do you picture first: Trinidad jumping on the ropes in premature triumph twice or Vargas climbing off the deck in dazed defiance four times?
And what is your opinion: that Vargas was rushed into the fight or that Trinidad was always going to be a notch above him?
This is either the story of a Puerto Rican icon prevailing in his most grueling challenge, displaying all the power, resilience and guile – and the trademark punch – that made him great … or it’s the story of a Mexican-American warrior solidifying enduring popularity while shaving years off his athletic prime by refusing to stay down.
Of course, in some measure – perhaps equal measure – it is both of those things. And whichever fighter you think of first, Trinidad-Vargas is an absolute classic that would have been 2000’s Fight of the Year if not for Erik Morales and Marco Antonio Barrera finding each other.
It was the second-best fight of the year 2000, perhaps a top-10 fight of the 2000s so far and probably the finest battle ever at 154lbs (unless you think Jarrett Hurd vs. Erislandy Lara surpassed it in 2018, which I do not) – and it’s crazy to think how close Trinidad-Vargas came to being over 11 rounds sooner than it was, which would have meant none of those superlatives.
In 2009, while compiling an article series for HBO’s website on the 10 best HBO fights of that decade, I asked Felix Trinidad Snr – “Tito’s” father and head trainer – if the 12th-round KO of Vargas was his son’s greatest win. He said the victory that meant the most was the controversial decision in 1999 over Oscar De La Hoya. But …
“In terms of the drama, and the attraction of the fight, the Vargas fight was the best fight, in that it produced Tito showing his great heart of a champion,” Trinidad Snr said.
The 27-year-old Trinidad entered the ring that night with a record of 38-0 (31 KOs), including 18-0 in title fights. He’d reigned for more than six years at welterweight, capped with the disputed majority decision over De La Hoya, then made the probably overdue decision to go up to junior middle. And his Y2K campaign had been magnificent. He battered ’96 U.S. Olympic gold medalist David Reid. He obliterated Mamadou Thiam in three rounds. And that set up a major pay-per-view showdown with Reid’s Olympic teammate Vargas.
Vargas, five days shy of his 23rd birthday, scarcely had more professional fights than Trinidad had title fights. He was 20-0 (18 KOs) and, in his previous three fights, mirrored Trinidad’s run over the same stretch. “El Feroz” won a disputed majority decision over future Hall of Famer Ronald “Winky” Wright in December ’99. Then he scored a career-best victory over Ike Quartey. And then he dispatched Ross Thompson in four rounds to set up the clash he’d been calling for, to determine who was the king of the 154lbs division.
“It was clear that [promoter] Main Events was rushing Fernando,” longtime HBO blow-by-blow man Jim Lampley told me in 2009. “And they were rushing Fernando because they wanted him and them to make whatever money he was going to make in the ring before he got into so much trouble outside the ring that it would end his career.”
Yes, there was a pending legal case against Vargas stemming from a 1999 assault charge. But that was only a minor factor, then-Main Events matchmaker Carl Moretti told me in a 2018 podcast interview. “The opportunity to fight Trinidad and the size event that it was and the money involved dictated more,” he said.
Lampley’s former broadcast mate Larry Merchant is more aligned with Moretti: “Many people say he was rushed,” Merchant said in ’09. “I never bought into that, because at the end of the day the idea is to make money, and he had an opportunity to make an awful lot of money, and he did.”
Vargas himself may not be the most reliable, impartial source as to whether he was rushed, but his 2009 comments are telling just the same: “I asked for it. I’m the one that wanted it. I said before that this Mexican wasn’t going to run, and I didn’t run.”
It also must be noted that it was a different time in terms of how quickly top American Olympic prospects were moved. Vargas and Floyd Mayweather both won alphabet belts in 1998, just two years and change after competing in the Atlanta Olympics, and Reid won his in March ’99. Vargas was not an outlier in being eager to challenge himself against pound-for-pound elites so soon after turning pro the way he would be in 2025.
And the Trinidad-Vargas fight was viewed as a near pick-’em coming in. The Californian was only a very slight +140 underdog at the Las Vegas sportsbooks. An HBO web poll the day of the fight found 56% of respondents picking Trinidad. When host James Brown put HBO analyst Emanuel Steward’s feet to the fire moments before the ring entrances, Steward pulled his feet away and said, “This is the first fight in my life that I cannot pick a winner.”
It took all of 21 seconds after the opening bell for it to stop looking like a toss-up. Vargas had the majority of the crowd of 10,067 at the Mandalay Bay Events Center on his side during the introductions, but it was Trinidad’s fans making all the noise when he hurt Vargas with the first serious left hook he threw, crashing it into the hinge of El Feroz’s jaw. A mere 26 ticks had come off the clock when Vargas hit the canvas for the first knockdown of his career.
Vargas, who later told me Trinidad’s punches “felt like fuckin’ baseball bats,” waded right back into battle still damaged, and Tito knew it and put him down again with another hook, this one on the point of the chin. As referee Jay Nady began to count over Vargas, the Puerto Rican star hopped onto the ropes in a neutral corner, believing, some 45 seconds into the fight, that it was over.
“I thought that the fight was going to end very soon,” Trinidad told me through a translator in 2009. “When I get to the ropes, it’s like a custom. People tell me, ‘Don’t waste energy jumping on the ropes. You are losing energy, don’t do that.’ But I trust in my conditioning. When I floored him two times, I was going to destroy him, to end the fight. I got a little wild. He was hurt, but he made it through the round.”
Vargas did indeed make it through the round – fighting flat-footed the rest of the way, but ducking punches reasonably well, seeming mostly recovered (at least until he walked to a neutral corner at the bell).
It’s easy to forget this now, armed with the knowledge that Vargas was stopped in four of his five defeats, but prior to facing Trinidad, there was no reason to think Vargas had anything short of a stellar chin.
A jab appeared to buzz Vargas again in the second. But then he settled in. The third round was notable mostly for the thumb of Vargas’ left glove causing Trinidad’s right eye to swell and for Tito getting a warning for a low blow, allowing Vargas two minutes of much-needed rest.
Through three rounds, the story had been Trinidad’s sensational start and Vargas’ admirable recovery. But there was not yet any reason to believe we had a real fight on our hands. Twenty-seven seconds into the fourth round, Vargas dropped Trinidad with a left hook – the fourth knockdown of the Puerto Rican’s career. And we had a real fight on our hands.
Tito got up and looked steady, but his subsequent actions suggested he was either a little buzzed or just wanted to take an extra measure to slow Vargas’ momentum. Trinidad fired off a left hand below the belt. Nady penalized him one point, and now the two minutes Vargas took to shake it off represented a break Trinidad likely welcomed.
“To me, it looked in the first minute and a half of the fourth round like Fernando had made this amazing transformation from having been lost at sea and too callow for this experience in the first round, and suddenly he was controlling Trinidad,” Lampley said in 2009. He proceeded to call Trinidad’s low punch “the most calculated and intentional and devastatingly effective low blow I ever saw.”
Trinidad objected to that characterization.
“I’m going to tell you right now that it was accidental,” the retired three-division ex-champ said nine years after facing Vargas. “I have never used dirty tactics in a fight.”
Whatever the intention, the knockdown and point deduction made it an even fight, 36-36, through four rounds. Vargas appeared the more energetic and accurate puncher in the fifth. Trinidad answered with two-fisted power shots in an outstanding sixth round that saw both men engaging in high-level, close-range combat, displaying both defense and aggression – matching the quality of the action in the first Morales-Barrera fight 10 months earlier, if not quite matching the pace.
Trinidad lost another point in Round 7 on a punch that replays showed landed on the beltline. For those who scored the round for Trinidad but then deducted that point to make it a 9-9 round, it was plausibly a 64-64 fight through seven rounds, a score I can’t recall seeing in any other fight I’ve covered.
But even if the fight was knotted up on the cards, Trinidad was gathering momentum. In fact, point deductions aside, he swept the sixth through 10th rounds on all cards.
In the midst of that came a Round of the Year contender in the ninth. Trinidad wobbled Vargas with a long right hand. El Feroz fired back with hooks upstairs and down. The final minute was pure war. CompuBox stats said they tied with 32 punches landed apiece over the three minutes.
Vargas lost a point of his own for a low blow in the 10th, and it was increasingly obvious that he was wearing down. Papa Trinidad told his son after that round, “He’s yours. He’s got his mouth open, and he’s tired.”
But Vargas, his left eye now swelling, wasn’t quite done. In the final five seconds of a close 11th, he landed a series of clean shots, making Trinidad’s legs dance ever so slightly. Both men thrusted a fist in the air when the bell rang to end the penultimate round.
As in the opening round, though, Trinidad, the best left-hooker of his era, struck early in the 12th. It was a right hand that froze Vargas, setting him up for the colossal hook that caused his head to bobble as he melted to the canvas. For the second time in the fight, Trinidad leapt on the ropes, thinking the job was done.
But again, Vargas showed heart, getting right up and bouncing on his toes. And again, Tito clipped him on the chin with a left hook and put him right back down. The fight was well out of reach and either Nady or Vargas’ corner could reasonably have stopped it, but it didn’t end until 1:33 of the round, Nady waving it off just as Vargas was crumpling to the canvas for a fifth time courtesy of a right hand.
Maybe Trinidad’s scaling of the ropes after the initial knockdown was a bit premature, but his father believed the second knockdown of the round should have spelled the end.
“I believe that they should have protected Vargas,” Trinidad Snr said in 2009. “Eduardo Garcia is a great trainer, but ultimately, Vargas was not protected. He should have been protected in that fight. Not only the corner, but the referee also. The referee should have protected Vargas. When those things are taking place inside the ring, you have to think about not only the punches your fighter is receiving, but also, who is the person throwing those punches?
“Vargas was a great champion, but Vargas didn’t have anything at that point, after the second knockdown [of the 12th round]. He was totally unable to defend himself.”
In 2018, during a podcast interview primarily focused on his 2002 fight against De La Hoya but also touching on what happened against Trinidad, Vargas admitted, “I only remember bits and pieces of the fight. On the way to the hospital, after the fight, I was in the ambulance with my [future] wife. And I asked my wife, I was in and out, in and out, so, I go, ‘Baby, did it look bad, when I went down?’ She goes, ‘You got up every time.’ I said, ‘What the fuck are you talking about? What do you mean I got up every time?’ … I didn’t know that I got knocked down five times.”
That punishing night did not mark the end of Vargas’ career as a top-flight fighter, but it’s certainly reasonable to observe that he was never the same, particularly in terms of punch resistance. He suffered a troubling knockdown in his next fight, against Wilfredo Rivera. He was stopped in the 11th by De La Hoya. He was stopped twice by Shane Mosley. In his final fight, he was knocked down twice en route to a decision loss to the limited Ricardo Mayorga.
I asked Vargas in ’09 if the Trinidad fight took something out of him.
“Honestly, I think it did,” he said. “Because I never got hurt before, and after that fight, the punches started taking their effects quick.”
In 2018, he added, “Do I feel that, if I had not [taken] that fight, I would have lasted longer in boxing? Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely.”
Trinidad said the same, in a way that Vargas could perceive as complimentary.
“You can see Vargas was different,” Tito said. “There was one Vargas before fighting me. There was another Vargas after that fight. I’m sure that if Vargas never fought me, and he fought against all the fighters that he fought after me, Vargas could have beaten all of them. … He could have knocked all of them out – De La Hoya, Mosley – if he had never fought me.”
Merchant wasn’t of the same belief when we spoke in 2009.
“Did it ruin the rest of his career, or did it just expose certain limitations?” Merchant asked. “I think he had certain limitations, but through his youth and ambition and hunger and drive, he was able to battle through them.”
Merchant added that he didn’t feel it was a mistake for Vargas to take the Trinidad fight so young. If he’d waited another year or two, the opportunity and payday might not have been there for him. And if the fight had still come together later, “probably the same thing would have happened in the fight,” he said.
Vargas made plenty of money in his 11-year pro career (an estimated $25 million in total purses) and engaged in several major fights after Trinidad – and accomplished enough to at least get his name on the International Boxing Hall of Fame ballot.
“I think that at the end of the day, at the end of the career, he just was not one of those super-elite fighters,” Merchant said. “I think that Trinidad and Oscar and Shane were just a little too good for him. But a lot of fighters would have settled for his career.”
Trinidad, meanwhile, did put together a Hall of Fame career, entering alongside his rival De La Hoya in 2014, the first year of eligibility for both of them.
And Tito was going in on the first ballot with or without the Vargas fight. But Lampley is among those who thinks December 2, 2000, at Mandalay Bay was Tito’s finest hour.
“The De La Hoya victory is still open to philosophical and tactical debate,” Lampley said, whereas “this was a rampaging, big-hitting puncher’s triumph over a kid with a world of talent and potential. It was a big credibility-builder for Felix.”
Among other things, it secured for him The Ring’s Fighter of the Year award for 2000. I was the managing editor of the magazine at the time, and was in Vegas to present whichever boxer prevailed with a Fighter of the Year belt at the post-fight press conference.
King Trinidad Raskin
Vargas had the Quartey and Thompson wins coming in. Trinidad had the Reid and Thiam victories. Our editorial staff agreed that if either man won without controversy, there could be no reasonable opportunity for anyone to surpass him for top honors for the year.
We had two separate nameplates made, and I snapped the correct one onto the centerpiece of the belt. I called Editor-in-Chief Nigel Collins to quickly confirm the decision and made my way to the presser.
When Trinidad emerged from his dressing room after a long delay, his swollen eyes hidden behind dark shades, Don King Productions publicist Alan Hopper summoned me to the dais to present the belt.
And King proceeded to announce that a representative of The Ring was there to honor Trinidad as the No. 1 fighter in the world, pound-for-pound.
That was not what the belt said, nor what our pound-for-pound rankings said, but I was given no opportunity to speak into the microphone – it was all I could do to get myself a 10-second window to hand Tito the belt before the junior middleweight champ began speaking.
As Trinidad spoke, I informed King that the belt was for Fighter of the Year, not pound-for-pound supremacy. King nodded and turned his attention away from me in a way that effectively said, “I said what I said, now get off my dais.”
So I returned to my seat facing the dais and listened as Trinidad intermittently spoke in Spanish and shed tears, emotionally and physically drained.
He had assumed for a fleeting moment that he was on his way to one of the shortest, easiest nights of his career. Instead he endured one of the longest and hardest.
The result was – among other things – the greatest fight in junior middleweight history, the high point of a Hall of Fame career and the perfect fight at the perfect time.
The highlights from Vargas vs Trinidad.
Awesome Fernando Vargas highlights video with the Eminem background music.
A couple of sweet Fernando Vargas trading cards. This is the 2020 Leaf Happy Holidays Purple Crystal auto /7. These cards come in different colors, Red, Pink, Green, Blue, etc. I had a chance to get the Superfractor 1/1 for this card a while back on eBay but somebody got to it first.
2021 Leaf Multisport Blaster Autographs Gold Fernando Vargas.
2010 Ringside Boxing Round 1 Fernando Vargas.
2010 Ringside Boxing Round 1 - Victorious - Fernando Vargas.
2010 Ringside Boxing Round - In My Corner - Fernando Vargas
2010 Ringside Boxing Round 1 Mecca Turkey Red Fernando Vargas. This is a gold parallel numbered to /9.
Like I said before, Fernando Vargas was never in a dull fight, and his bout with Oscar De La Hoya in 2002 was an apocalyptic encounter, the whole back story to the bout was made-for-TV drama. There was indeed bad blood between the two.
Golden Days and Ferocious Nights: De La Hoya Vs. Vargas in Review
California versus California was the flavour in the super-welterweight division throughout 2002.
By: Tommy G. Robins
Mar 07, 2025
There is nothing more integral to the consumption of American boxing than spite.
Arguably, it is the primary ingredient; the central ingredient that keeps the business from burning in a burial heap. At every level, the fuel is spite.
Fans and spectators regurgitate spite. Pundits and other associated mouth-pieces consider a degree of spite in their speech and opinions. Of course, fighters themselves thrive in the realms of spite and hate.
Whilst many, many fights are made to pit one athlete against another in the pursuit of sporting greatness, there are a rare few that are more primal in their construction.
There are fights that are worthy of the scathing description associated with the very word fight. These aren’t matches; there is often too much of every heightened emotion one can think of to be described in this way.
One of these bloodied, blood-fuelled blood-feuds took place in 2002, as the heat and hardship of an August summer gave way to the more languid autumn of an early September month.
Two men, united by a state and separated by a fierce and undying rivalry, shared the ring over twelve rounds for the WBC, WBA, IBA and vacant The Ring Magazine Super-Welterweight titles.
Three titles and eleven rounds were the total sum of the sheer carnage of Oscar De La Hoya (39-6) versus Fernando Vargas (26-5).
Hate is not something grown within a day. The underlying seed of hate is time. This is something seen throughout history.
Of course, more general history, and certainly, boxing history.
These rivalries, born out of geography or politics or incident, are generated over a sustained length. Like many boxers, the rivalry that grew from one young man to another originated from the amateur code.
According to Vargas, their years of disgust and vitriolic insults worthy of a man christened as ‘Ferocious’, all began with a laugh.
Sources state that, whilst training, Vargas collapsed into a snowbank after losing his footing. The incident was met with a hearty laugh from ‘The Golden Boy’, who kept going, rather than helping his Californian brethren.
This reaction, as extreme as it might be, was attributed to a difficult childhood by Vargas.
As quoted by Sky Sports from an interview given on the Toe2Toe Podcast, Vargas said:
I never had a dad. My dad was never there. My dad was a drug addict.
My dad died a drug addict.
Vargas instead found solace in the boxing gym, on a path that would lead to Oscar De La Hoya and the position of being the best at super-welterweight.
‘The Golden Boy’ was the darling of American fight sports.
Handsome, defined features that provided De La Hoya with ample promotion combined with a methodical and exciting ring presence that saw De La Hoya overwhelm the professional leagues, ‘The Golden Boy’ was a suitable moniker in every regard.
Even as the champagne and cocaine 1990’s gave way to the brutality of the 2000’s, De La Hoya was one of the most well-known boxers on the planet.
Performances against Julio Cesar Chavez (107-6-2), Pernell Whitaker (40-4-1) and Hector Camacho (79-6-3) saw De La Hoya transcend his Olympic-winning amateur career and become a four division world champion.
Meanwhile, Vargas was very much the antithesis.
If De La Hoya represented the opulence of the United States throughout the 1990’s, with tanned skin and bright, blinding smiles, then Vargas embraced the harsh and intimidating attitude era that was about to come.
By 2002, De La Hoya had fought thirty-six times, becoming a four weight world champion and a box office draw. Meanwhile, Vargas had also fought in the Olympic Games, losing in the second portion of the 1996 Atlanta Olympics in a controversial and divisive decision.
This is to say that, where Oscar naturally flourished, Vargas was severely plagued by the shadow of something that had always followed him; trouble.
As a professional, Vargas sought to catch up to his rival - not only to achieve the same heights as ‘The Golden Boy’, but to enact some kind of one-sided revenge.
In only his fifteenth fight, Vargas captured the IBF World Super-Welterweight title by exorcising demons against ‘Yori Boy’ Campas (108-17-3), who had gotten the better of Vargas years prior during sparring.
Vargas, then only twenty-one years old, was violent and aggressive in his approach. Unlike the pedagogically perfect De La Hoya, Vargas ached for blood. Campas retired in the seventh.
By 2002, ‘Ferocious’ Fernando had caught up. Only a single loss, to Felix Trinidad (42-3), tarnished his resume. Seizing the lesser IBA World Super-Welterweight title, the stage was finally prepared for a finely-aged rivalry to finally end.
True finality.
At the very end of 2001, negotiations fell apart. Two weeks of talks throughout the seasonally bleak month resulted in nothing; there was no White Christmas for either man in California.
Afterwards, negotiations would flair and falter.
Their communications almost resembled two factions in a medieval war, attempting to divide and conquer. In the early half of the year, they agreed; May 4th would be the date.
That day, as average as any other in the American psyche, came and went without incident. Oscar De La Hoya, a month out from the initial date, withdrew. The cause was a common one for a man of his vocation - an injury to his left hand.
The event was billed as Bad Blood. If anyone knows anything about bad blood, it does not dissipate without conflict. A week later, the date was rescheduled. It had to be.
Both men would suffer through an oppressive summer to meet at the Mandalay Bay Events Center in Las Vegas on the 14th of September 2002.
The stage was set. The men were ready. Years flowed through their veins more than boiling, begging blood. In the eyes of Vargas, this was revenge. For De La Hoya, who had found the antics of Vargas to be extreme, this was business.
Introductions had finished and talking, a crucial factor in their rivalry, had ceased. The bell sounded and their conflict erupted, all at once.
True conflict.
Their war of words was wonderfully vicious, but their fisticuffs was something otherworldly.
At twenty-nine years of age and sporting the weight of 154 lbs, far from his debut weight of 134 lbs, De La Hoya was coming into the later stages of the prizefighting cycle.
In contrast, the exhaustive preparation put forward by the consistent 154 lbs-er Vargas was evident; he was in the fighting shape of his life, all in devotion of a man he had so much disdain for.
This possession not only seized his body, but his mentality. It was something that won him a smattering of the early rounds. ‘Ferocious’ was an apt word in every sense.
Oscar De La Hoya, the more technical, pure boxer of the two, very much fought at the whim of Vargas in those early rounds. Pressure was contained into pushes that saw ‘The Golden Boy’ on the back foot.
It was a wonderful ruckus for a man with so much anger and chaos on the mind. However, it might’ve been too much. After all, Oscar was in a state of tranquility - despite what might’ve been shown on the surface.
Naturally tactile and naturally an intelligent counter-puncher, De La Hoya slowly affirmed his position in the contest. The physical pressures of the Mandalay Bay - the heat, the light, the spectators - they were nothing in comparison to Vargas.
And yet, by the fourth, De La Hoya crept into the competition.
The fifth round was a spectacle. Vargas had De La Hoya hurt. Really, truly hurt. The sort of hurt that is felt in memory, one that is never relieved. Vargas drew blood from De La Hoya; a pathway originating from his nose.
Entering the sixth round, however, things changed. Whilst that previous pain is never relieved, Vargas did relieve the pressure; he was fading.
The constant experience of being a four division champion bled - ironically for a man bleeding through his nostrils - into the fight. With Vargas in a state of oncoming exhaustion, ‘The Golden Boy’ shone through.
Courage kept Vargas upright and swinging, but skill and knowledge kept fuelling De La Hoya; some of these attributes burn brighter than others.
Round ten was the definitive point at which the contest became one under the domain of De La Hoya. Repeatedly throughout said round, the left hook was something like an illegal weapon in regards to the damage that it inflicted upon Vargas.
Throughout the three minute stretch, it would drill and dig and burrow into Vargas - so much so that it cut the ferociously fading Fernando. Both men had drawn blood.
It is not often that the billing of a fight accurately correlates to the action on display within the zone of combat. This time, however, it was dead right.
More than a visual indication of damage for De La Hoya, ‘The Golden Boy’ could smell his victory in their shared air and taste the finish with every shallow gulp of it. The eleventh round was prove to be the last.
Oscar De La Hoya was golden in that last stanza.
At 1:48 of their initial championship round, it was over. The four division champion was not a man in those moments, but a driven force. Bad Blood had come to an end.
Finality.
In the aftermath, it failed to truly vanish.
Both men received swaths of praise for their performances. Vargas was hailed for his initial performance and willingness in those later rounds to weather the storm. De La Hoya, meanwhile, was applauded by those who saw ‘The Golden Boy’ as a relic.
Together, they had done something marvellous.
Yet, Vargas was not satisfied.
De La Hoya often tells an anecdote in which, after the fight, he booked an entire restaurant to hold a private audience with Vargas, with the desire for peace.
However, Vargas verbally berated the man who had beaten him, demanding a rematch and insulting ‘The Golden Boy’. Their bad blood, at least in the eyes of Vargas, was very much still flowing.
Only in more contemporary times, with both men retired, misshapen caricatures of their prior selves, have they discovered a pathway to peace. Their children forged friendship where their fathers forged rivalry and hatred.
Said unlikely friendship provided the means for the two to finally dim the flame of their decades of animosity.
Me and Oscar are friends now. We are absolutely at peace.
It is evident that those ferocious nights, such as the one that finally saw them collide in 2002, have given way to golden days, where men can put aside their divisions and learn.
Although, their eleven rounds still stand as a monument to human drive, emotion and spirit, in every sense of the word.
This photo of Fernando Vargas and Oscar De La Hoya at a press conference before their fight really tells the story between these two.
The highlights from Fernando Vargas-Oscar De La Hoya.
Some photos of Fernando Vargas and Felix Trinidad during their fight.
Fernando Vargas and Felix Trinidad in their corners during their fight.
Fernando Vargas and Felix Trinidad after their fight, you can really see what a roll that fight took on them.
Look at these images of Fernando Vargas hitting Oscar De La Hoya in the ribs with a vicious body shot, the expression on Oscar's face. Them body shots ain't no joke, they hurt like crazy. Great photos.
Savage images from the Vargas-De La Hoya fight.