K.O.W. - El Matador disfrazó como un toro

Ricardo Mayorga, ironically nicknamed "El Matador" given his overwhelmingly bullish style, was on my mind this past weekend, both because of the Vernon Forrest match and because Mayorga's September 8th bout with Fernando Vargas is growing ever closer. It's a real shame that this is a PPV fight, because neither fighter is really PPV-caliber right now, and yet this promises to be a rock-em-sock-em robots kind of night that any fight-fan worth his salt will want to see for sure. I've no doubt that you've all seen the video of the Mayorga/Vargas brawl by now, so let me just take you back to a moment from that press conference to set up our Knockout of the Week. Before the fireworks started, Mayorga told the audience that he'd been training for two months already for Vargas and that he plans to be the same fighter that he was when he won his first world title. He then recommended that we all go back and look at the tapes to see just what kind of fighter he was back then.

So I'm taking him up on that. Here's the KO from his win over Andrew Lewis in March of 2002 that won him his first legitimate belt, the WBA welterweight title. He and Lewis had met the year before and the bout was stopped as a no-contest after Lewis suffered an ugly cut from a headbutt in the second. In the rematch, Mayorga predicted that he would stop the champion in three - it ended up taking him two more rounds that that. And a beautiful, brutal knockout it was. It's this type of wild-swinging savagery that has made such a mediocre, dubious athlete as Mayorga a major attraction for years now, and I can't imagine that will stop anytime soon. He says he wants to get back to 147 and fight Cotto and Mayweather and Hatton, et al. Hear hear, says Large. I'd pay to see any of those guys out-matador El Matador.