What the Hell Happened to Barrera?

Nobody would of dreamed that after his crushing loss for the second time to the Filipino wunderkind Manny Pacquiao, the 35 year old former multi divisional champion Marco Antonio Barrera would of fought again.  Especially after it was made known that he would be dissolving his partnership with the promotional outfit that he help found, Golden Boy Promotions.

Instead, we found him one year later signing a multi year contract with now irrelevant Don King Promotions and fighting on the undercard of Andrew Golota vs. Ray Austin in China, beating a relative unknown with a 4 round TKO in the lightweight division.

If that wasn’t bad enough, Barrera (65-6, 43KO) has just recently fought in his adopted hometown of Guadalajara, MX, and was forced to leave the ring among booing and chants of “fraud, fraud.”

The debacle all began after his original opponent Johnny Nolasco (17-4-4, 8KO) of Phoenix, AZ, by way of the Dominican Republic was not able to secure a visa days before the fight card which was celebrated last Saturday night.  In is stead, a last minute replacement was quickly found, the Puerto Rican Freudis Rojas who according to his unofficial Boxrec.com record holds a 1-8-1, 1KO ledger.

After a disastrous two round were it was apparent that Rojas was overwhelmed with the reality of facing such a renown world champion and all he did was survive, the bout ended in the third round when Rojas head butted the “Baby Faced Assasin”, opening a gash on Barrera’s head and prompting the official to stop the bout.

That is when the boos and chants began.

What we are failing to realize is that although Rojas was not fit to even carry Barrera’s jock strap into the ring, no other opponent but a big name fighter would of satisfied the crowd that night in Guadalajara.

Barrera for many years has made it public that one of his biggest dreams before retiring is to fight on Aztec soil again.  Despite the fact that he might of preferred the hollowed ground of the Estadio Azteca, he settled for the new Telmex Arena in his adopted city of Guadalajara, MX.

Since he had not stepped into a professional ring in that city for seventeen years, many Guadalajara citizens believed that they deserved a war like the ones that Barrera had waged against his arch nemesis Erik Morales or the ones he battled against Naseem Hamed, Kevin Kelley or Juan Manuel Marquez.

Instead all they got was a little over six minutes of a legend chasing a scared fighter around the ring.

Now, Barrera is slated to face Amir Khan (19-1, 15KO), the British answer to a young Oscar De La Hoya.  A former Olympian, Khan is a household name in his native England, in as much that at the early age of 22 he has already written his autobiography.

The once beaten Khan is coming off a second round TKO of Oisin Fagan after being destroyed in the first round by Colombia’s Breidis Prescott back in September of 2008.

So in a classic battle between young lion versus old lion, Barrera finds himself across the ring from a young, hungry prospect with Freddy Roach in his corner, the man that has masterminded the rise of Manny Pacquiao and who helped the Filipino beat Barrera twice and Morales as many times.

To get back to my original question “What the hell happened to Barrera?”, I find it hard to believe that a man that has just signed a contract for his own show on ESPN Deportes which will give him a higher profile than any other Mexican fighter in Mexico, still feels the need to perhaps destroy the legacy that took so much time and effort to build.

The fight in China is understandable since it was his first fight back in one year.  But in Guadalajara, that was a disaster.  Did anybody expect for Nolasco to be any different that Rojas was?  Nolasco had not faced anybody in the same hemisphere as Barrera and the fighters that are recognizable on his ledger -Steven Luevano, Martin Honorio, and Jason Litzau- he all lost too.  Barrera mentioned after the fight that he expected the negative result in Guadalajara after the opponent was changed but that he didn’t want to disappoint the fans by canceling the bout.

I find it hard to believe that he thought the fight would end any other way.

But now to travel to England to face a quick and natural lightweight in Khan’s home arena is puzzling.  Khan’s team and especially Freddy Roach are very calculating, and I am sure that they only took this fight because they feel that they have a better than average chance to win.

If you don’t believe that, just ask the “Golden Boy”.