Miguel Vazquez Calls Out Marco Antonio Barrera for June Fight

Ernesto Castellanos of Notifight.com/BoxingScene.com reports that lightweight trinket-carrier Miguel Vazquez wants Mexican veteran Marco Antonio Barrera for his next fight. Vazquez is set to fight on June 4 in Los Angeles, on the undercard of the Sebastian Zbik-Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. event.

Vazquez (28-3, 12 KO) has become one of the top lightweights in the world at age 24, learning his trade in the pro rings since 2006. His record is good as it is, but is also deceiving. He lost his first fight, which came against Saul Alvarez, and his other two losses came to Timothy Bradley in 2007, and again to Alvarez in 2008.

Since that third loss, he's gone 7-0. He had a breakthrough performance in July 2009, beating Breidis Prescott on Friday Night Fights when Prescott was at his perceived peak. Since then he's dominated Ji Hoon Kim, Ricardo Dominguez, and most recently, Leonardo Zappavigna on the Cotto-Mayorga undercard.

Barrera (67-7, 44 KO) hasn't looked good in a fight since his 2007 loss to Juan Manuel Marquez, and hasn't won a notable fight since beating Rocky Juarez a second time in 2006. At 37, "The Baby Faced Assassin" is a shell of his former self. I know we've said that a lot lately, and Barrera rival Erik Morales shocked a lot of us by putting in a great performance against Marcos Maidana on April 9, but Vazquez is not Maidana. He's tricky, he's skilled, and he can box. Barrera's bag of tricks would be unlikely to be as effective against this opponent as Morales' was against Maidana.

If this fight does get made, though, I have to think that unless HBO really paid a hell of a price for Zbik-Chavez, Top Rank might wind up kicking themselves for missing out on the chance to stick this on a self-produced Latin Fury PPV. Chavez-Zbik combined with Vazquez-Barrera, Rafael Marquez-Mike Oliver, Julio Cesar Miranda-Brian Viloria, and Vanes Martirosyan-Saul Roman would have made for pretty solid buys and overall likely an entertaining night. I know as a dude who writes about boxing I'm supposed to decry all pay-per-views, but frankly if those fights are going to happen, I'd really like to see all of them, and not have to rely on Top Rank's lousy internet streams.

Of course Vazquez-Barrera isn't signed or anything like that, but Vazquez-someone else with that lineup looks just fine, too. Miranda-Viloria is a good fight, Martirosyan strikes me as someone destined to lose before a cash-out so I always find his fights intriguing, and Marquez is one of my favorite fighters.

Hopefully Top Rank will at least stream the undercard. And hopefully their technology will actually be watchable all the way through for once. Can someone convince them that the way they're doing those streams just isn't good enough, and that boxing fans DO want to watch the show, and get frustrated by faulty technology?