Quijano: 10 reasons Ruben Garcia had Vasquez winning

Monday, February 6, 2012

IT WAS a gutsy, inspired performance from Nonito Donaire Jr., and Wilfredo Vasquez Jr. was damn lucky to have survived that fight on his feet. Doubly lucky that Donaire broke his hand too.

From the start, upon feeling the numbing power behind Donaire’s lashing jabs and hooks, the normally aggressive Vasquez turned timid and fought cautiously. A pitiful departure from the all-out war of attrition he promised to bring.

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SHOWBOATING. A lot of fans were apparently turned off by the “showboating”, but I am inclined to let this one go.

Maybe it was a tad too flashy, I’ll concede, but remember that Donaire had to let his guard down in order to entice Vasquez to let his hands go so he could be open for counters.

In his prime, Roy Jones Jr. did a lot of hamming up in order to please the fans, but it also served a purpose. He would often appear as an inviting target so his opponent will open up. He would then use this lighting speed to land first and score.

Vasquez employed a defensive approach in the first five rounds and so Donaire had to resort to luring him with traps.

The fly in the ointment was that the “Filipino Flash” got tagged too often for comfort. I thought he relied too much on his power than on his speed and was willing to take a few hits just so he could counter with one big shot.

What I like about Donaire is that he is seldom content to just coast along and win the fight on points. He always goes for the spectacular finish, damned be the consequences to him in the process.

Despite the fact that Vasquez seemed to figure out Donaire’s strategy and unleashed blows sparingly to minimize Donaire’s opportunities to counter, “The Filipino Flash” never stopped trying.

In the end, Donaire was by far the superior fighter and the Last Round salutes this modern day Pinoy gladiator for winning the WBO super bantamweight title.

REALLY DR. GARCIA? Many fans are in an uproar over the bogus 115-112 score that boxing judge Dr. Ruben Garcia turned in for Vasquez. Was he watching another fight?

Well, wonder no more. I have it on good authority that it must have been due to any one of the following reasons:

1.) It was a case of mistaken identity. He arrived late and missed the introductions made by Michael Buffer. He actually thought Donaire was the heavily- tattooed Boricua.

2.) Terrible penmanship. He actually scored it, 115-118, for Donaire, but the 8 looked like a 2;

3.) He was secretly watching and scoring the UFC welterweight matchup between Nick Diaz and Carlos Condit via live streaming on his mobile phone in between rounds and mistakenly handed over the wrong piece of paper;

4.) He’s aspiring for a transition from boxing judge to senator-judge of the impeachment proceedings where you are actually allowed to disregard evidence and render a verdict based on bias and belief;

5.) He never was an arithmetic genius. Usually he brought along calculators during matches, but because he was in such a frantic rush, he belatedly realized that he brought along the television remote;

6.) “115112” was actually the room number of that hot, perky blonde ring girl which he mistakenly wrote down as the final score total;

7.) A Puerto Rican street gang was seated directly behind him and one of them was constantly plying him with pina-coladas;

8.) He thought the 10-point must scoring system meant that a boxer must be able to withstand 10 unanswered punches and remain on his feet to win the round;

9.) Wilfredo Sr. was an old college buddy;

10.) He had too many Last Rounds at Jingo Quijano’s birthday party the night before and only a fraction of him showed up at the fight (contributed by Rico Navarro)
HE SAID IT. “Ni minsan, hindi siya tumatawag kung birthday ng mama ko, ng papa ko. You could have everything else... pag wala kang pamilya na totoo sa iyo, wala ka.”--Glenn Donaire, brother of Nonito (www.fighthits.net)

LAST ROUND. It’s on my dad, the late Atty. Froilan V. Quijano, who would have turned 76 today. Cheers, Dad! I know you never missed a column.

(jingo_quijano@yahoo.com)