The term “meteoric” rise is used to describe the speed in which someone rises to the top of their chosen profession. However, like everything traveling that fast, and that brightly, there is a time that it has to come down. In Fernando Vargas’s case, no one predicted it would occur at the ripe boxing age of 28 years old. Saturday night in Las Vegas, the puncher from Oxnard Ca., lost his fourth fight to a world class opponent, and this time again, there was no question he was in way over his head.

     Vargas came into the fight believing he saw something in the last fight, something he could capitalize on. What he didn’t see, was a left hook thrown beautifully by Mosley, in the 6th round of a fight which Mosley easily controlled. This fight wrapped up Vargas’s career in one fleeting punch. It was a microcosm of all his losses wrapped into one solid shot, that he never saw coming.

     Vargas had always relied on his power; he had a false sense of security  throughout his career, beating some tough fighters with that same power. Unfortunately, he never developed the defensive skills needed to take him to the next level. Vargas has always been susceptible to the left hook. That is how De La Hoya knocked him out, that is how Trinidad dismantled him, and Mosley just merely watched the tapes.

    His lack of head movement and awkward ring positioning has always been masked by the power he naturally had in both hands. Why his trainer Danny Smith, did not do more to develop this fighter, I will never know. After his difficult victories, over Ike Quartey and Winky Wright, it was blatantly obvious; he needed to develop more ring skills. Shelley Finkel, who manages Vargas, had a similar fighter in Mike Tyson. All the signs were there, but it seems the people around him were reading the only signs that seem to matter these days in boxing, and that is dollar signs.

Mike Casile