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Valero TKOs Mosquera to take the WBA super-featherweight belt
The Panama Marathon
Panamanians in Major League Baseball

The champ is dethroned: long reign the champ!

by Eric Jackson

The records could have foretold what happened --- but then in professional boxing, few things are ever to be taken as equal. Sometimes people get their title shots without ever facing a severe challenge, and sometimes people get beaten and then come back to be champions. The boxing scenes in some countries are more competitive than in others.

Vicente "El Loco" Mosquera had been beaten and tied on his way to the WBA super-featherweight championship, but he arrived at that station in life by coming up through a highly competitive Panamanian boxing scene. Venezuela has produced some fine boxers and has a larger population than Panama does, but pugilism in the Bolivarian Republic is not as highly regarded as ours.

Still, Edwin "El Inca" Valero came to the Figali Convention Center for his challenge to Mosquera with a 19-0 record, all of his wins by knockouts, 18 of them in the first round and the other in the second round. Make whatever comparisons or discounts you will, but this was not a challenger to be taken lightly.

Valero made that clear right away. He came out the aggressor and sent Mosquera to the canvas twice in the first round. It looked like the champion would be one more opponent who couldn't get past the second round with the young Venezuelan.

But actually, El Loco won the second round by this reporter's scoring, and knocked El Inca down in the third to win that asalto as well.

But the fourth and fifth rounds were terrible slugfests, both of which Valero won. In the fifth the two prizefighters traded licks and tied according to this observer, but it looked as if the devastating blows that Valero had been landing earlier in the fight were still landing but far less devastating.

After that, Valero seemed to get a second wind and dominate the rest of the bout. In the ninth round of the scheduled 12-rounder he put the champ on the run.

It was more of the same in the 10th. Mosquera might have been able to hang on to go the distance, but he had lost his power, clearly wasn't going to turn things around with a late-rounds knockout, was too far behind on points to win any sane decision, and two minutes into that round his manager Francisco Arroyo stopped the fight to concede Valero the TKO.

There was a consensus among boxing commentators that Mosquera erred in being drawn into a slugging match with Valero, that the Venezuelan is just too heavy a hitter to win such a contest. But the way that the challenger came out on the ferocious attack from the opening bell also suggested that this was not a young man that one could readily beat by using Mosquera's usual orthodox technical boxing style. After the first round fiasco El Loco probably needed to show that he could punch with Valero, and he sort of did with the knockdown he scored in the third. Why the champ didn't after that point was made go back to his more customary style is a question for the ages.

This bout is also one for the ages. Its video will be the stuff of classic boxing programs around the world for many years to come. It was a sad result for Panamanian boxing fans, but it was one hell of a fight. And it was probably also Valero's grand entry onto a world stage on which he will play a leading role for some years to come. He's a truly awesome boxer.