Mexico vs Puerto Rico: A Sweet Science With Bitter Chemistry - East Side Boxing - 21/07/08

Photo: Puerto Rico's Miguel Cotto, left, and Mexico's Antonio Margarito at a news conference in Mexico City, May 19.

In the world of sports there's only one thing that parallels the accomplishment of reaching ultimate supremacy in the form of a championship. That one thing is, always has been, and always will be, the passionate feeling relative to defeating an arch nemesis.......

.....The ring-wars between the two nations technically got under way back in October of 1978 when famed Puerto Rican Wilfred Gomez set out to defeat the once-thought-to-be unstoppable Carlos Zarate, who remains the only boxer in history to put together two streaks of 20 or more knockouts. The winner of 55 fights in a row with all but one coming by way of KO, never in a million years did anyone think - despite his greatness - that Wilfred Gomez would be able to pull off the victory. This would be Zarate's first fight in a new weight class four pounds north of his comfort zone, and shortly after the bell rang, standing in the ring under a blazing tropical sun in Puerto Rico's Roberto Clemente Coliseum, he quickly realized that there's no place like home as he suffered his first lost in his pro career in a devastating fashion on foreign sand in the island of Puerto Rico. Over the years, other great Mexican-Puerto Rican wars would later manifest. Among the best of the many would be Benitez-Palomino, Pintor-Gomez, Gomez-Sanchez, and subsequently the Chavez-Camacho shallackin'. Of all the great fights we've seen over the years in this lineage, the one synonymous ingredient was a feverish passion to pay the ultimate homage to ones homeland. And despite that passion to be the last man standing, the paths taken to reach that pinnacle have often been reached in different ways. In what some may view as a relative stereotype, typically, Puerto Rican fighters give you a certain level of overall talent, infused with pride. You see the speed, the pure boxing skills, and often, better than average power. In Mexican fighters we've historically seen the sheer ability to gut it out and win at all cost. Never known to bare the quickest hands in the group, their unrelenting prowess to take a beating while delivering a better one has always been their trademark. Often dispatching an effort that falls short of nothing but literal death in the ring.

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