Mayorga vs. Vargas. AP photo

By Ron Borges

Sometimes things don’t work out the way you planned. Friday night was such a night for Fernando Vargas.

What was supposed to be his glorious exit from the boxing ring was transformed into a bloody beating from an opponent he had grown to dislike more than Oscar De La Hoya, which is saying something if you are Vargas. As endings go, it wasn’t a fairy tale. It was a flogging.

Vargas had not fought in 16 months, not since his second fight with Shane Mosley left him battered into submission and, it appeared, into retirement as well. But for reasons only he will ever fully understand the 29-year-old former junior middleweight champion elected to try one last time on legs that had long ago deserted him and the result was that he began the night on the floor and nearly ended it there as well, which is why Ricardo Mayorga left the Staples Center in L.A., only a short ride from Vargas’ home in Oxnard, with reason to believe he still has a future in boxing.

Vargas, on the other hand, left with several million more than he started the night with but with no such self-delusion. Instead he drove home with swollen eyes, a bruised face and sad confirmation that his decision to confirm his retirement after the fight had come too late.

Bad blood had boiled over repeatedly between the hot-blooded Mexican and his Nicaraguan nemesis throughout what became a far longer promotion than intended. The two were originally set to face each other in September but a blood disorder sidelined Vargas for several months. That was probably a good thing because it had taken him a full year to lose what he estimated was 100 pounds to get down to the contracted weight of 164.

He made it but he was not the same ripped fighter he’d been when he faced De La Hoya and Felix Trinidad nor was he anything more than a shadow of the fighter who had once become the youngest man ever to win the 154-pound title when at 21 his hand was raised as a world champion for the first time.

Those kinds of memories die hard in fighters, especially ones as spirited as Vargas. So the thought of one last night of victory became an obsession with him after losing back-to-back matches with Mosley, the second one far more lopsided than the first.

That second night with Mosley, Vargas (26-5, 22 KO) looked like what he was again on Friday, a boxer well past his prime trying to re-create a dream that was already in re-runs. Of course, the same could be said for Mayorga (28-6-1, 1 NC, 22 KO) for he had looked equally shot after De La Hoya dismembered him 18 months ago in six rounds, dropping him once less than a minute into the fight and twice more in the final round of what was so clearly a mismatch one could have justified stopping it at any time after the opening bell and not gotten much of an argument.

So what the crowd of over 10,000 Vargas supporters at the Staples Center gathered to watch on Friday night were two shadows squaring off, one trying to end his career in victory, the other trying to rekindle the lost flame of his.

When Mayorga came out after the opening bell and quickly assaulted Vargas and Vargas retaliated with a low blow it seemed that all the vitriol and animosity that had dogged their steps through one riotous press conference after another would spill into an ugly night in the ring but soon after that low blow Vargas was on the canvas, a barrage of punches having overwhelmed him.

Several more times he was wobbled in the first half of the fight and his left eye was cut by the end of the third round. What was of more concern however was while he had brought what was now an ample body into the ring he had left his legs back home in the San Fernando Valley.

Round after round Vargas would wobble backwards when Mayorga landed big lead right hands, always tottering on the brink of collapse. And then, for one last remarkable moment, Fernando Vargas suddenly seemed to find his rhythm about mid-fight. He was like an old dancer who mid-way through a sad performance suddenly began to feel the music again not just hear it.

As he did, he began to brutalize Mayorga’s body and that slowed down his older opponent, giving Vargas a chance to fight his way back into the match. That had always been Vargas’ calling card, a willingness to ignore pain and difficult circumstances and fight back even in the most dire circumstances. He did it the night Trinidad nearly knocked his head off his shoulders 30 seconds into a fight Vargas would ultimately lose in the final round but not before dropping Trinidad himself.

He took a terrible beating that night, a second one at the hands of De La Hoya and then two straight from Mosley, the second worse than the first, so little was expected of him by most boxing insiders but the kind of machismo he showed in making it nearly an even fight late in Round 11 when Mayorga drove him down onto his back for the final time of his career with a right hand to the chin that was set up by Mayorga’s left forearm.

With the two at close quarters late in a round Vargas was winning, Mayorga teed up his opponent’s chin with his left forearm and then blasted him with a right hand that sent Vargas sprawling, his feet rolling up nearly over his head as he landed.

Although he got up and would later call both trips to the floor “flash knockdowns’’ what they were was clear evidence that while his heart remained intact his legs had retired from boxing before the rest of his body. That is an old story among prize fighters and always a sad one.

Vargas understood he needed a knockout to win in the final round but he also understood that to go for it would put him at risk of ending his last night in the ring on the floor again and so he opted to fight merely to finish rather than to the finish, losing a majority decision in which one judge charitably called the bout a draw.

Because of Mayorga’s own deficiencies the bout was indeed close but all the telling blows were landed by the ill-tempered Nicaraguan. Surprisingly, Mayorga had boxed more under control on this night than he ever had before, only occasionally slipping into the wild-swinging, wide-open challenger he was on the nights De La Hoya and Trinidad destroyed him.

That unexpected ability to control his emotions and fight a smart, tactical fight was what won for him. What lost for Fernando Vargas, however, was something different. What lost for him had little to do with Mayorga. What lost for him were two deserters, legs that no longer had the resilience to fight any more.

Twice they went out from under him and at least a half dozen other times they had him wobbling backwards as if someone had unexpectedly pushed him backwards against a low table edge he didn’t know was behind him.

“I thought he would be a lot wilder,’’ Vargas said of Mayorga after the decision had gone against him. “Unfortunately he wasn’t. Sometimes you have a bad night. Unfortunately I had it on Fight Night. I’m sorry I let people down.’’

Fernando Vargas was right about Mayorga and about his ill-timed bad night but he was wrong about one thing. He had nothing to apologize for, except perhaps for making the same mistake nearly all his predecessors in boxing have made – which was to stay too long at what can be a dangerous dance on the wrong night.

He let no one down however. Once, in the bitter days leading up to his crushing loss to De La Hoya, his opponent’s business advisor, Richard Schaefer, said if Vargas did not win that fight he would be remembered as nothing more than “a guy who sold a lot of tickets.’’

In boxing, and in life, there are a lot worse things to be remembered for than that. Fernando Vargas did, to be fair, lose to all of the best fighters he faced but he also twice won the junior middleweight title and he won the hearts of a loyal following not only because of those victories but because he was always ferocious even in defeat.

On his last night in a boxing ring, Vargas was in trouble early and late but in between he reminded those fans of who he always had been – a guy who might lose but never without a fight.