Israel Vazquez won his comeback on Saturday, but fight fans are now wondering if he really has anything left. (Photo via www.goldenboypromotions.com)

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I remember March 3, 2007 like it was yesterday. 11 days before I turned 25, with Bad Left Hook in its infancy then, I was more excited to see Israel Vazquez and Rafael Marquez fight than I could really ever remember being to watch a fight. The fight had been hyped fairly well among hardcore boxing fans, but I was on another level of anticipation. Vazquez had already become my favorite fighter, largely on the strength of his stirring comeback win over Jhonny Gonzalez. He was good and exciting before then, but that one just struck me as downright heroic.

Marquez was a fellow warrior, a great bantamweight champion who had been drilling the opposition. On paper, it seemed to me that there was no better potential matchup in boxing than Israel Vazquez-Rafael Marquez.

I turned out to be right. I envisioned a great trilogy as soon as the first fight ended. We got one, three of the damnedest, most brutal fights you will ever see, and ace-level boxing, too. This wasn't Gatti-Ward.

Their third fight came in March 2008. It was the best of the trilogy, an unbelievable war of attrition that saw Vazquez win the fight in the waning seconds, knocking Marquez down and sealing victory. They deserved every ounce of praise they got and then some, and they still do.

But here we are in October 2009. Marquez didn't fight again until May of this year. Vazquez underwent three surgeries to fix a detached retina, and made his return this past weekend. He struggled badly with a fighter from lower weight classes who had lost six in a row coming in, until finally stopping Angel Antonio Priolo in the ninth round.

Ring rust is one thing, as is age. At 31 and with years of wars under his belt, Vazquez is much older than that, quite similar to fellow Mexican warrior Erik Morales, whose career hit the brick wall before his 30th birthday. It is no knock on either man to say that Morales was probably cooked at 29, and that Vazquez, 31, looks to be the same. Some fighters are Floyd Mayweather and never get hit. Some are Bernard Hopkins and can fight at the top level at 45 (well, OK, there's pretty much just the one Hopkins). Some are even Roy Jones, and hang on past their prime, but do so without seeming to be in any real danger.

Others are warriors like Vazquez, Morales and countless others, whose bodies just plain can't do it anymore.

I don't want to doubt Israel Vazquez, but nobody's had a genuinely good report of this comeback fight, so it's not just me, or just one other person. This is also hardly the first article of this tone you've probably come across in the last few days. They're everywhere. They're everywhere because Vazquez has connected with boxing fans in a way most fighters never do. As corny as it sounds, we care deeply about Israel Vazquez, because he has cared so deeply about putting his body through hell in an effort to entertain us. That doesn't make him a better person than anyone, but it does endear him to us. He's one of "our" fighters.

Rafael Marquez looked rested and sharp in May. I don't want to see Vazquez-Marquez IV. I don't think it ends well for Vazquez at all, don't think he really has much of a shot to win that fight, and though it pains me to say this, too, I don't think he'll ever be a top fighter again. He certainly didn't look like a top 10 featherweight on Saturday.

All fighters eventually get old. Some of the greatest, and most memorable, do so when they're still young. I'll be telling stories about Israel Vazquez when I'm 80 years old, but I think I just might be ready to stop learning new ones.