Under the aura of Bonavena, Maravilla Martínez will have his baptism at the Luna Park while he cherishes the distant dream of becoming world champion again

Sergio Gabriel Martinez He was 15 months old and taking his first steps on May 22, 1976, when a bullet fired from a 30-06 Remington rifle ended the life of Oscar Natalio Bonavena in front of a brothel in Reno. This Tuesday, Marvelouswho is taking his last steps in boxing, even if he still has the dream of fighting for a world title, will join his path with that of the idol of the Parque Patricios: he will be the protagonist of the stellar fight of the evening at the Luna Park which will accompany the preview of the series Ringo – glory and death. The event, for which tickets will not be sold, will be broadcast on ESPN and Star+ starting at 8pm.

Twenty-five years after his professional debut, with 61 fights in his career (he has a record of 56 wins, 3 losses and 2 draws), several world titles and undisputed awards, Martínez will have a first experience: he will fight for the first time at the Corrientes coliseum and Bouchard, who only attended in October 1999 to see one of the shows with which Red hot peppers presented his most successful album in Buenos Aires: californication.

This duel, in which he will have the Colombian Jhon Teherán as an opponent, will also mark the return of the quilmeño to the Argentine ring: his last performance in the country was on April 27, 2013, when he beat the Englishman Martin Murray on points at the José Amalfitani stadium and retained the World Boxing Council middleweight title which he would relinquish to Puerto Rican Miguel Cotto 13 months later. That was his only performance in this corner of the planet since he packed his bags in March 2002 and traveled to Madrid, where he has resided ever since.

The clash against Tehran will be the sixth he will face Marvelous since putting his gloves back on in August 2020, after a six-year hiatus, to beat Spaniard José Miguel Fandiño by seventh-round knockout in Torrelavega. Although he has emerged victorious in all five fights in this second cycle of his career, he has done so against opponents with few records (the only one with a valuable record was former World Cup challenger Brian Rose). In his last presentation on December 11, he eliminated the American Noah Kidd in two episodes in Orlando.

With a legacy that will never change anything and at an age when most of his colleagues have long since retired, Martínez’s sporting continuity seems guided by that reflection by Santa Fe director Fernando Birri on the value of utopia which the Uruguayan writer Edoardo Galeano once said: “Utopia is on the horizon. If I take 10 steps, she will move away 10 steps. She moves away as I approach. That’s what utopia is for: to walk”. In the quilmeño’s case, that utopia takes the form of a fight for another world title (he was already a WBC super welterweight champion and a middleweight with that organization and the World Boxing Organization).

“I’m 48 years old and I’m still searching with the same insistence, the same desire and the same strength as when I was twenty. I have found a way to locate myself in life, which seeks a goal without distractions. I go straight to that goal by taking the shortest route. It’s the most effective way to get to your destination,” explained the boxer on February 22, a few hours after celebrating his 48th birthday. With the calendar as an additional opponent, that road is proving to be quite a long one for him.

Since his return, Martínez has made it his goal to get a shot at the World Cup. The most viable way has always seemed the one offered by the World Boxing Association, beyond the discursive marches and countermarches of its president, Gilberto Jesus Mendoza. Indeed, his last fight was part of the festival bill Drug KO, which was held as part of the WBA Centennial Convention. And she currently occupies second place in the median ranking of the organization that recognizes Cuban Erislandy Lara as champion.

Two weeks ago a door opened (or at least a small window) a Marvelous, but in a few days it was closed. Kazakh Gennadiy Golovkin, who held the WBA 160lbs super champion title and faced a mandatory duel against Lara, relinquished his crown on March 9, for which Caribbean was recognized as the sole monarch of the division . It remained for him to know in front of whom the next defense of him would have to face.

The Panama-based body’s number one ranking is Australian Michael Zerafa, who was in negotiations to face Brazil’s Esquiva Falcão for the International Boxing Federation title, which Golovkin had also left vacant in February. This strengthened the Argentine’s chances. But the WBA championships committee destroyed them on March 13, when they ordered Lara to face Zerafa. Nothing suggests that the Oceanians refuse this opportunity.

While you wait for your golden ticket and invest part of your time in complementary activities (lectures and seminars or participating as an analyst on ESPN signal broadcasts), Martínez continues to expend the gloves in the ring. This Tuesday he will do it against an opponent who is 38 years old and has a record of 18 wins (15 before the limit) and 2 losses, who has not recorded any major wins in his service record and who, like his occasional rival, also has went through a long hiatus in his career.

Tehran’s two missteps took place on Argentine soil. In August 2014 in San Fernando del Valle de Catamarca, local Miguel Barrionuevo pulverized him in less than three minutes of activity, in a fight framed in the welterweight category. Thereafter, the San Onofre-born boxer went inactive for nearly seven years, before returning in June 2021 and chaining three wins. But in September of last year, in his last performance and already installed in the middleweight division, he fell by technical knockout in the fifth round against Juan Manuel Taborda of Cordoba at Villa María.

Reviewing that story of the Colombian, Martinez’s favoritism is clear, even if for a 48-year-old man any fight hides a latent risk, beyond the qualities of his opponent. The former world champion has warned more than once that he is “one defeat away from retirement”. This Tuesday he will make sure that this farewell does not take place at the Luna Park. At least for now.

Brian Arregui, for recovery

“If he keeps doing things like that, we have a future world champion there, but he needs logical time,” Sergio Martínez told Clarín in February 2022. He was talking about Brian Arregui, one of the great promises of Argentine boxing, who In One of the complementary fights of the evening he will face Matías Galucci from Santa Fe looking to put behind the controversial defeat suffered in his last submission.

Olympic champion at the Youth Games in Buenos Aires 2018, representative of the national team at Tokyo 2020 (he lost in the first round against the American Delante Johnson with a scandalous failure) and current super welterweight youth world champion of the World Boxing Organization, the man of Entre Ríos He has collected seven wins (four on the fast track) since his rental debut in December 2020. That streak was ended on December 9 of last year in a duel with an unexpected ending.

That night at the Payne Arena in Hidalgo (Texas), the boxer born in Villaguay 23 years ago was disqualified in a fight against Eduardo Reyes that the Mexican had the task of soiling like hell. After deducting two points in the second episode for a low blow that only he saw, referee Humberto Zavala, with a wrong decision, took the Argentine out of the fight due to an impact that hit Reyes’ neck because l The American had practically stood with his back to his rival.

Now Arregui will try to put that very bitter pill behind him when he faces Galucci, 29, who has a record of 8 wins (4 by KO) and 2 losses, and who failed in his bid for South American super welterweight last year belt when he was eliminated in the third chapter by Adrián Sasso da Cordoba.

In addition to the introductions of Martínez and Arregui, the undefeated Laureano Sciuto of San Pedro, who won his 11 fights (7 before the agreed distance), will face Héctor Sosa (14-2) of Junin in the featherweight category, while the Buenos Aires super flyweight Sebastián Castillo Cuban Damián Arce, member of the Dodores (his country’s national team) and bronze medalist at the Pan American Games in Lima 2019, will be the opponent against whom Cuban Damián Arce will make his professional debut.