THE NIETES-RODRIGUEZ TITLE FIGHT - WHAT A HOT AND AN INTERESTING EXPERIENCE!
By Ed de la Vega, DDS
PhilBoxing.com
Sun, 15 Aug 2010
Guasave, Sinaloa, Mexico:- Whoever said that fights at the Cebu Coliseum are unbearably hot, temperature hot that is, has not experienced what we had last night at the Auditorio Luis Estrada Medina near downtown Guasave. The heat at the Cebu Coliseum is like a walk in the park compared to that at tonight?s venue.
Man, I have not had so much sweat pouring out from every pore in my skin until last night. The temperature inside the place must have been easily over 100F degrees making me feel my sweat down to my underwear. Yak!
As soon as we got off the car and saw the venue, I knew it will be hot as heck. The darn roof of the venue was made of corrugated tin roofing material. People who designed that building must have not heard of the word ?insulation?. The place was an oven.
The dressing rooms were less than comfortable. It was hot and muggy inside plus it was in disarray. But, being Filipinos and used to adversities, we made the best of the situation.
It appeared that the dressing rooms were used for some sort of storage as we found bicycles and some construction materials scattered around. There were no seats provided so we had to secure our own plastic chairs to have a place to seat. We also had to bring our own water and swiped some ice from the beer vendor to fill out my ice bag. After Nietes? hands were wrapped, he had to step out of the building for a few minutes to cool off before he got back in to don the gloves for a short warm up.
One thing funny was they gave us a stool that was broken and non-serviceable. The top was not screwed to the bottom metal support. Thus we had to improvise. We used a white plastic chair that was meant for ring side people. I bet it made a good impression on the TV audience. Oh incidentally, the stool for our opponent was in perfect working order.
For some reason, we noticed that the corner of Mario Rodriguez was using an electric fan, a trick that was not supposed to be allowed. (See photo ) But he was fighting in his hometown so what can we say? In retrospect, we should have pointed it out to the officials but we just gave them that advantage knowing that we would have beaten their guy anyway.
Up until round 10 when Nietes suffered a cut from an accidental head butt, I thought I would just spend the evening applying Vaseline and helping cool off Nietes with the iced watered sponge between rounds. Fortunately, having the right stuff I was able to stop the bleeding without any trouble at all.
In spite of all the short comings, we have to give the organizers plenty of credits. First, we felt totally secured being in their town. That was of utmost importance.
Then they would bend over to give us anything we asked. They were very polite and very nice people, a far cry from what we experienced in other parts of Mexico. Needless to say, their food was great.
The challenger Mario Rodriguez was one tough cookie. For a kid with lesser number of fights than Nietes, he took all that Nietes can give and dished his own too particularly at the last three rounds. But Nietes was a wily veteran so he was able to weather the storm and finished with a well-deserved unanimous decision.
And, as an icing on the cake, the people of Guasave gave him a huge hand for his performance a true sign of their maturity as fight fans.
With the third victorious title defense for Nietes in Mexico, it seems that this country is fast becoming his home turf too. Perhaps we now can call him the ?Little Mexicutioner?.
Top photo: The author (L) works on the of Nietes.
A man (left, highlighted) cools Rodriguez with an electric fan in between rounds in the oven-hot Auditorio Luis Estrada Medina.
Photos by Dong Secuya.
Click here to view a list of other articles written by Ed de la Vega, DDS.
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