Their punches crash and their punches fall short. But they never stop.
Abner Mares and Leo Santa Cruz share a fighting spirit baptized by SoCal streets and cut with a Mexican blood heritage. They look to set the ring aflame against each other come August 29 at the Staples Center in Los Angeles.
With personal pride on the line as well as hometown bragging rights, Mares predicts a special kind of bloodshed is imminent, per the Los Angeles Daily News:
“I think it’s going to be one of those Gatti-Ward fights.”
It is a matchup between two men sewed together at the hip by fate long ago, sparring together at the Maywood Boxing Club when the two were bantamweight prospects and growing up half an hour away from each other before that.
Both men have 31 fights to their name, both trade off a high output style and both fight out of Southern California by way of Tierra Azteca, the country of Mexico.
The biggest (and the most damning) trait they share, however, is the canebrake reputation they have acquired under the counseling of advisor Al Haymon, often cited as the most powerful man in boxing.
Mares, who grew up in the Hawaiian Gardens, and Santa Cruz, in Lincoln Heights, fight for more than a “W” at the end of the month. They have a chance to shred the stigma of being sheltered Haymon clients, condemnation that has taken away nearly every bit of luster from their spectacular treads through the bantamweight and junior featherweight divisions.
Mares, in particular, once symbolized a spark of hope in a sport suffocating on politics and greed. He fought the best competition he could get his hands on through three weight classes. It took a network war between HBO and Showtime to keep him out of the ring with someone like Nonito Donaire, the Filipino virtuoso.
But it was late 2014 when Mares signed on with Haymon, just one fight removed from his stunning first-round knockout loss to Jhonny Gonzalez. While two more victories have followed, they have been over third-rate opposition: Jose Ramirez and Arturo Santos Reyes. Both of which were coming off a loss.
Santa Cruz has been working with Haymon since his first title defense against Eric Morel in 2012. A string of knockouts and title defenses over the likes of ranked foes Victor Terrazas and Cristian Mijares made him arguably the second best 122-pound fighter in the world outside of Guillermo Rigondeaux.
But his recent three fights against no-hopers have attracted more criticism than perhaps any boxer in the world. His last fight, his first foray in the featherweight division, came against the unheralded Jose Cayetano—another Haymon-selected palooka coming off a loss.
A fight with Mares will be a colossal step back up in competition. It marks his real introduction to the loaded featherweight ranks.
The division is scary as Mares experienced firsthand against Gonzalez who handed him the lone loss of his career. Santa Cruz was the co-feature that night, picking up the most impressive win of his career at the expense of Terrazas, a former world champion.
Long has Santa Cruz drawn comparisons to Antonio Margarito, a prolific volume puncher, but he really lived up to it that night against Terrazas, a top-5 super bantamweight at the time, completely drowning him with punches en route to a third-round knockout and the WBC 122-pound strap.
Mares would fight next but fall to Gonzalez, a lengthy knockout artist with much the same measurements as the gangly Santa Cruz who sports a three-inch reach advantage over Mares.
But overcoming size discrepancies is nothing new for Mares. He hasn’t fought a man shorter than himself since back in 2008 when he knocked out former flyweight contender Diosdado Gabi.
He has proven he knows how to win big fights, roughing up Joseph Agbeko, outboxing a polished southpaw in Anselmo Moreno and knocking out Daniel Ponce De Leon in 2013, an especially rugged man in a sport built on rugged men.
The fight can go either way. And when boxing matches are this close, a great show is typically had. Violent affairs are guaranteed and that’s the perfect remedy for the recent track record marring their once reputable careers.
Fate has brought them here and the two combatants are going to prove who is on another level once and for all. When you break up something as fastened together as they have been for their entire lives, it’s like splitting an atom.
The results are explosive.
All photos by Suzanne Teresa/PBC
