Urango Shows Class in Defeat

March 8th, 2010

Joe Roche

So here I am – standing with Urango and his team after what must have been a disappointing (and convincing) defeat and I’m begging to hear something – anything to explain what happened but nothing comes. Hell I even toss a softball, I mean Juan was on his feet when Esteves called an end the fight 1:18 into the eighth round and with Juan being a defending champion I figure the least he can do is say that he should’ve been able to continue fighting. Fernandez smiles when I ask him if the fight should’ve been allowed to continue “it was a good stoppage.” That’s it? No bashing officials? No crying foul – or blaming Don King for running a corrupt event that was always designed to crown Devon Alexander?

Alright I try a different approach – maybe the coach can tell me that the fighter didn’t follow the game plan. When I spoke to Fernandez during the week he said the plan was to fight two or two and a half minutes per round, and push the pace, so I assume that the fighter failed to live up to the game plan right? “He followed my game plan to a tee. When I told him we were behind on the cards and to go get him – he went and got him.” Once again Fernandez proves to be a tough nut to crack.

Fernandez is also widely recognized (at least in my experience) as a genuinely nice guy, so if he’s not going to give me something to write about maybe Juan Urango will. I mean c’mon the Columbian fighter must think that there was a conspiracy against him on this night. Maybe I can point out that two of the three ringside judge’s had Alexander ahead on their scorecards, while one lone judge (and yours truly) had Urango ahead 4 rounds to 3 when the eighth round began. At this point I imagine Juan Urango will explode in a fit of rage, to wit he responds that “I’m very happy with my performance tonight. Devon is a great champion and he came out and did his job. I performed well but Devon won tonight.”

Hmm… a fighter humble after a difficult loss? I’m confused – isn’t this professional boxing? Did I take a wrong turn at the off ramp and find myself in some alternate universe where fighters and their team are capable of admitting when someone was actually better then them on a particular night?

Maybe I should point out the most startling fact – the moments that I spent with Juan Urango took place before most of the media arrived in the media room for a post fight press conference. Sure only the boxing scribes in the crowd will see the significance in that but a losing fighter showing up to the post fight press conference and then taking time to take pictures and sign autographs with the people assembled in the room? This ladies and gentlemen is not an ordinary every day occurrence and frankly that has more to do with Juan Urango not being your ordinary every day fighter.

As Urango makes his way to the front of the media room there is one last chance for him to give me something to put in an article headline. The wounded former champion shows the signs of his war on his face. He’s asked if there is anything he wants to say – to which he responds, through a translator that he wanted to thank us all for coming, thanked Don King, and then said god bless – and he was gone.

Saturday night’s junior welterweight title unification bout was a great fight. Juan Urango followed his game plan, he pushed Devon Alexander, landed solid flush power shots (115 of 301 power shots thrown) and basically followed the plan he had laid out for the fight. On this night though no amount of game planning could help Urango, because the better man was Devon Alexander – and instead of focusing on a bunch of meaningless sound bytes Juan Urango acted like a champion and more importantly he acted like a man and admitted that he was beaten, fair and square. At the end of the day Devon Alexander was the big winner – he announced his presence in the junior welterweight division with authority showing off more power then we anticipated, a much better chin then we thought, and the same great speed. But it was Juan Urango in defeat that showed me exactly what it means to be a champion – and he deserves a lot of respect for how much respect he showed the boxing world on Saturday night.