I can't get my mind off of this fight, and the trilogy as a whole. We're heading into a pretty big weekend of major fights, with HBO and Showtime both in action on Saturday, but I want to give just a little more time for Vazquez-Marquez. We'll go bullet points style again.

• This is something that's gaining some steam among fans and writers: If they fought ten more times, Vazquez would win every time. It's nothing against Rafael Marquez. But while he's slightly taller and has a longer reach than Vazquez, Vazquez carries 122 pounds better, hits harder, and can weather Marquez's punching. In every fight, I think this was evident.

  Look at the first fight. Marquez dominated two rounds, and got caught with a left hook that put him down in the third. He took over again after that, recovering very nicely. He won the fourth and fifth rounds, but the sixth and seventh saw Vazquez build a lot of momentum. What if Vazquez hadn't been fighting with a re-broken nose, caused by Marquez in the first round? Vazquez's people have always said he didn't go into their first fight with his nose at 100%. Again, not taking away from Marquez. As Rafael later said, in response to Vazquez talking about the nose so much, "I punched him."

  That fight was turning toward Israel Vazquez.

  The second time around, Vazquez came out sharper than he did in the first encounter. I thought they split the first five rounds (two for Rafael, two for Israel, and even in the fifth) before the Vazquez TKO in the sixth. You might think the stoppage was slightly premature, and I do, too. But don't you think that fight was 20 seconds or so from ending anyway? Marquez was being demolished.

  On Saturday night, it was more of the same. As well as Israel Vazquez was fighting, Marquez was better in the earlygoing. I thought Marquez took five of the first six rounds, and he dropped Vazquez for the first time in the fourth. After six rounds, as excellent and as hotly contested as the fight was, I had Rafael Marquez running away with it, 59-54.

  But this fight didn't end in six or seven rounds, as the first two did. It went the distance. And Vazquez's power punching and larger, better built for the weight frame was the difference. Vazquez won rounds seven through nine, and even though Marquez won the tenth, the point deduction for low blows was a killer. After ten rounds, I had it 95-93 for Marquez.

  Eleven was Vazquez's round. And the 12th and final round was all Israel Vazquez. Again, I would have scored that 10-8 regardless of the knockdown. The round was SO one-sided, I think you could have scored it 10-7 for Vazquez. Marquez landed a few nice shots, but they had nothing on them. He was forced to flee from the raging Vazquez, and he couldn't sit down on his punches and really back Israel up. And Vazquez plugged away until he scored the knockdown that won him the fight on my card, 113-112, That was the same score on Dr. James Jen Kin's card, which, of course, is slightly more important.

  The 12th round won the fight for Vazquez, and it's because he was stronger by then. Marquez faded in the third fight the same as he did in the first. The second fight saw him pummeled before he could really fade. His fading went right along with the stoppage of the fight.

• There's no need for a fourth fight. All of my feelings on a fourth fight are in the above paragraphs, and Franklin McNeil said basically the same thing at ESPN.

  I also agree with McNeil that Marquez is the better pound-for-pound boxer of the two, and It's not particularly close. But those four pounds make all the difference in the world. Did you ever see Rafael Marquez fight at 118 pounds? My God, he was a wrecking ball. The 118-pound version of Marquez was as high as No. 2 on my personal pound-for-pound list. He was that good, that destructive, and that overpowering. His fast hands and lightning combinations combined with vicious power, and it was truly a thing to behold.

  At 122, the power just isn't the same. Also credit Vazquez for being a tough, tough son of a bitch. If you make a pound-for-pound list of the toughest fighters in the game, I'd put Vazquez No. 1. He has spent the last four fights of his career getting pounded and overcoming it. The only thing that stopped him from winning the first fight against Marquez, I now feel, was the fact that he couldn't breathe. If you've never seen his epic comeback over Jhonny Gonzalez, seek it out. It was another case of a 118-pound fighter outboxing Vazquez before the heat got turned up and Israel overwhelmed his opponent.

  But with as much as I'm praising Vazquez, I also think Rafael Marquez deserves just as much in way of props. If you consider him a bantamweight that has had a three-fight stint at super bantam, then I think he's a top five pound-for-pound fighter. If he's firmly at 122 now, guess what? He's so good that he's still the second-best in the division, behind Vazquez, and he's still top ten pound-for-pound. Would anyone really favor Caballero or Ponce de Leon over Marquez?

• Going back to the Gonzalez fight briefly, when is the last time a fighter had four straight fights as electrifying as Israel Vazquez has put together? Forget Manny Pacquiao or anyone else -- the must-see action fighter in boxing is Israel Vazquez. This is not up for debate.
• A friend of mine watches a lot of fights with me, and has seen all three Vazquez-Marquez fights. He loved every one of them, as everyone else has. He's not a huge boxing fan, but he knows the difference between a good fight and a piece of crap. When a fight is good (Cotto-Mosley, Cotto-Judah, Vazquez-Marquez, Barrera-Marquez, even Taylor-Wright), he gets into it. When it's not (Klitschko-Ibragimov, Pacquiao-Barrera II, etc.), he knows the difference.

  He also wonders -- as I'm sure many casual fans do -- why more fights aren't like these fights. The first reason is that few fights are. But I think the bigger issue is this: How many times do we see a matchup of this caliber? There are lots of them to be made. Haye-Maccarinelli promises to be outstanding fun this Saturday. And I know I've complained about the pay-per-view status of Mosley-Judah, but I'll also all but guarantee that we see an entertaining fight between those two.

  So few fighters and promoters are willing to actually make these fights. Humberto Soto could have challenged Pacquiao last October instead of safety-first Marco Antonio Barrera, and we'd have gotten a much better fight. Of course, Pacquiao would have gotten a smaller payday. Mayweather could fight Miguel Cotto, but this is a business, and Oscar de la Hoya promises to make him a LOT more money.

  Juan Diaz could've fought Michael Katsidis in what would have been an all-action affair. Instead, we get Diaz-Campbell and Katsidis-Casamayor, two fights that have their good points on paper, but don't outright promise the action.

  You don't see these fights often because nobody actually puts them together. Someone always gets in the way. That's also a reason why we should treasure them.

• Does anyone else think that the talk of Vazquez stepping up to 126 is a mistake? The guy is my favorite fighter, but does the power translate four more pounds? Marquez moving from 118 to 122 saw him retain maybe 75-80% of his power. The same, I think, could happen to Vazquez at 126. And considering he's not a slick boxer (though he's pretty good), that could really hurt him at the higher weight.

  Robert Guerrero already said he'd like to fight Vazquez. If it makes Vazquez more money, then all the best to him. Personally, I think Golden Boy would be insane to not match Vazquez with Daniel Ponce de Leon sometime this summer or fall, after a long rest for Vazquez to recover from these grueling wars. Vazquez-Ponce would not be Vazquez-Marquez, but it's another dynamite matchup. This is not an opponent who would be afraid to mix it up with Ponce de Leon, which is when Daniel (1) has problems and (2) produces dull fights. An opponent willing to engage him gets the most out of Ponce de Leon, and we as fans get the most out of his fights.

One more salute to Vazquez and Marquez, and a hearty thank you to those fighters, Showtime and Gary Shaw, and everyone else that initially thought, "You know what would be a hell of a fight?" and then actually made it happen.

Photo © Mark J. Terrill / AP

There was good, bad and some ugly that came out of last night's remarkable conclusion of the Israel Vazquez-Rafael Marquez trilogy, arguably the best of their three incredible fights, won by Vazquez via split decision thanks to a seek-and-destroy 12th round effort that gave him the official scorecard of Dr. Jim Jen Kim.

Let's talk about the ugly first.

There should be no controversy about this. Marquez was warned repeatedly for low blows, and landed a couple or three that referee Pat Russell didn't even catch. Whether or not the offending blow that got a point taken away from Marquez was actually low is almost irrelevant. Marquez could have justly had a point taken away prior to that, or after.

Secondly, promoter Gary Shaw needs to learn when to pick his fights. He has recently gotten under the skin of Golden Boy's Richard Schaefer, accusing the promotional company of trying to upstage Vazquez-Marquez by holding a press conference for Oscar de la Hoya's bout with Steve Forbes this week, a fight that will also be taking place at the Home Depot Center in Carson, CA.

It's an unwritten rule that you don't upstage other major fights in the same region, but Golden Boy contends that that was not at all their intent. After all, they help promote Vazquez. The Golden Boy press conference spoke at length about the great fight coming this weekend, and tickets for Oscar's return bout don't even go on sale until this coming Tuesday.

Yet, Shaw really had at it about that one. Schaefer sniped back. I'm not that into tabloid stuff, but that was the first of Shaw's missteps this week. (For the record, the Home Depot Center was filled and rocking for Vazquez-Marquez.)

After the fight, and following Rafael Marquez's complaints that (1) no point should have been taken away and (2) he wasn't knocked down in the 12th (which he most definitely was), Shaw says he will protest Russell's calls, hoping to get the result overturned.

Jesus Christ, Gary. You just had a hand in putting on three of the best fights the public can ever hope to see, including this stone cold classic, and you want to overturn the decision? For one thing, the calls were just. Any protest will go nowhere. You cannot be held up by the ropes while you're falling. That was the case for the 12th round knockdown of Marquez, which ultimately won Vazquez the fight. And how many low blows was Marquez supposed to land before he got a point taken away?

For Gary Shaw to taint what we saw by complaining about non-wrongdoings is selfish and stupid. Hopefully cooler heads will prevail and this won't become a real issue, because it isn't one to begin with.

As I said before, Pat Russell did a great job in this fight, and should be commended. A lot of other referees would have stopped the fight sometime during that 12th round. Marquez was taking shot after shot after shot, wobbling around the ring, fleeing for his life. Vazquez was a bulldozer that round, and even when stung by Marquez, he barely even flinched. The knockdown was legit, and that round could have easily been scored 10-8 even without it. Vazquez was all over him.

The bad? There's not much, but this talk of a fourth fight is too much for me. I've officially decided that. Yeah, LaMotta and Robinson fought six times, but this is a different age. There are a lot of other challenges out there for both men. As great as the fights were, do we need to see another one? The physical toll this has taken on both men and their careers will be felt in the future.

As Showtime's Al Bernstein said, it's a rivalry where few are going to recall that Vazquez emerged the winner. Not that he doesn't deserve all the respect in the world for beating Marquez two of three times, but when you talk about Vazquez-Marquez, you're talking about both fighters contributing to their great fights.

That will never change. This isn't about Israel Vazquez or Rafael Marquez. It's about both of them and the history they made with these three fights.

The good is obvious, isn't it? This trilogy was just off the charts, each fighter better than the last one, in my view. I don't even really have the words to describe how significant their series really was.

Congratulations to both men. Where they go from here isn't at all clear, though Vazquez has said he wouldn't mind moving to to 126, or unifying titles at 122. We'll have to wait and see. For now, just bask in the glow that comes from seeing another truly special fight. They raised the bar, again.

I have a birthday party for a friend to get to, but I want to do a few quick bullet points on tonight's magnificent tiebreaker between Israel Vazquez and Rafael Marquez, won by Vazquez on split decision thanks to a knockdown in the final ten seconds of the fight (114-111, 113-112, 111-114 -- my card was 113-112 for Vazquez, who was floored earlier in the fight).

• The fight was INCREDIBLE. I never thought these two could go 12 rounds. And not only did they do just that, but it was a superhuman effort on both parts to accomplish that amazing feat.
• This was their best fight. I really mean that. This had all the sound and fury of the first two, it just kept going for twice as long. Unreal.
• Marquez was wildly upset with the decision, and doesn't think he was knocked down in the 12th. He was -- you can't be held up by the ropes, which was the case.
• Referee Pat Russell deducted a point from Marquez for repeated low blows, which was just. And the knockdown in the 12th was rightly called. Russell did a wonderful job refereeing this fight, and deserves great credit for that. He let them fight, gave Marquez more than enough warnings about the low blows, and called it square. Plus, instead of jumping in and stopping the fight in the 12th (Marquez was being blown away the entire round), he gave it a count instead, and let Marquez finish the fight.
• I feel bad for anyone that missed this fight.
• I now feel this is the best trilogy of my lifetime. With this fight, they have surpassed Barrera-Morales.
• They're talking fourth fight, which is really early, of course, but I don't know how I feel about it. Would I tune in? Of course. I love the fighters. But do they need to do this to their bodies again? Look, I don't get all holy about this stuff. But they are taking a lot of punishment. I ain't their moms, so it's not up to me. But I can't say I'm FOR it.

We'll have a LOT more tomorrow on this unbelievable fight, which will be almost impossible for anyone to top. We may have already seen the 2008 Fight of the Year.

Photos © Damian Dovarganes / AP

I never got to experience what trilogies like the action-packed series between Rocky Graziano and Tony Zale really felt like, or the serious significance of Ali-Frazier.

While I think you can study boxing history and learn a lot from it, it's my opinion that it's tough to really feel what things were truly like unless you were around to experience them. You don't have to be there live (although that never hurts), but feeling the hype, the buzz and the glamour of a fight or any other event is hard to duplicate on tape.

What are the best boxing trilogies of my lifetime?

Barrera-Morales tops my list. Gatti-Ward and Holyfield-Bowe were legendary, and Pacquiao-Morales was electric, even with the one-sided finale. Casamayor-Corrales is overlooked, I feel, in comparison to the others.

And now we have Israel Vazquez and Rafael Marquez, the most super of the super bantamweights.

You can't do any better than their first two fights, but if there are two fighters that could, it's Vazquez and Marquez. During their first bout last March, Showtime color commentator Al Bernstein said that the two were tailor-made for one another. He was right. And many of us knew it going in.

It was a fight that, on paper, couldn't fail. And not only didn't it fail, it surpassed expectations. And then? The rematch in August was even better.

Can their third fight be the best yet? As much as it would be unwise to expect them to top last August, they've earned those expectations.

Simply put, these two cannot give you a bad fight. The only question about a knockout is when it will happen, and which side it goes to. There will be no decision. It's not possible for these guys to go 12 rounds with each other.

Vazquez and Marquez, like the warriors before them, are not fighters that are going to be boxing at the top level for a whole lot longer. Morales retired in August a month shy of his 31st birthday. Barrera decided to hang them up in October at age 33.

Vazquez is 30 years old and has been through more grueling wars than just the Marquez fights. And Rafael is 32.

But whether or not they stay much longer as two of the best pound-for-pound fighters in the sport is not the point right now. The point is that these two men have given boxing and its fans a gift with their fights. They deserve a hot crowd at the Home Depot Center tonight, and they deserve for everyone with even a slight interest in the sport to tune in and watch them perform against each other one more time.

At 1-1, the tie will be broken. Will Vazquez's left hooks end the story, or will it be the combination punching of Marquez? Frankly, I have no idea. And I don't care who wins. I'm in awe when I watch these two fight, and I'm looking forward to seeing them go at it one more time.

9pm eastern on Showtime. We'll be here with round-by-round coverage and scoring, though the scorecards won't matter. This one will end before the final bell sounds -- that's a guarantee.

Israel Vazquez and Rafael Marquez are both incredible to watch. Thundering power, deft boxing skills, heart for days. Both men have all of that.

I want to help hype the hell out of their third fight, coming up on Saturday, March 1, because they deserve it. And because I want everyone to see this fight.

I do mean everyone. I want boxing fans, MMA-exclusive fans that find boxing to be dull, football fans, baseball fans, basketball fans, hockey fans that miss fights, soccer moms, cats and goldfish to see this fight.

If you're a casual boxing fan that has stumbled to Bad Left Hook, and you think you only care about "big fights" or the heavyweights, then give these two 122-pounders a chance. No, they aren't big guys. But tell me these aren't bone-rattling shots. Tell me the skill isn't just off the charts. Tell me, after watching these fights, that you just can't see yourself watching the smaller weight divisions.

Showtime should be given great credit for the loyalty they've shown to these two wonderful fighters. And it's because of Showtime that we have good video of the first two fights between the warriors to share with you. They're encouraging everyone to share their media, and that's a nice step from the network.

Without any further ado, Bad Left Hook presents to you via Showtime: Israel Vazquez v. Rafael Marquez I and II. If you've never seen the fights, watch them. If you've seen them, you know you want to watch them again.