Barby Juárez begins goodbye tour with silver super bantamweight championship

For Mariana Juárez the years do not pass. It is preserved like the best wines. At 44 years old, on her goodbye tour, she knocked out the South African Matshidiso Mokebisi and won the WBC silver super bantamweight world championship before nearly 2,000 fans who gathered at the Forum Hipódromo de las Américas.

Yesterday’s fight is the beginning of the end in the 25-year career of The Barbie. He plans to hang up his gloves at the end of this year.

The woman from the capital moved around the ring not like that 19-year-old rookie who knew professionalism, she did it like the figure that time managed to convert.

After a year and a half without combat, he walked around the string with the gestures of someone who knows the path he had to travel to enjoy that moment. He had nothing to prove, but he still allowed himself to fight a battle worthy of his lineage against Mokebisi (3-18-11).

The Mexican did not overflow. She measured her rival. Patience was her best virtue.

The brave bitchan animation group that supports the Toluca soccer club, encouraged the boxer with their chants as they have been doing for 10 years.

The African, with a defensive style, waited for The Barbiewho found his best blows with his left hand.

Both reached the seventh episode without getting hurt, but with the challenger physically weakened. There, the local found her best combinations and with agility pierced the retaining wall that her opponent had put up. Mokebisi went to the corner looking like he couldn’t take it anymore.

It was an announcement of what was about to happen in the ninth, with the Mexican hitting her best blow to end an evening that tells us that Mariana (56-13-4-20 kO’s) is still in force.

Time transforms ways of thinking, and it is part of what it achieved The Barbie Juárez in his career. Those sexist insults that he received in his first professional fight became mere memories. This Friday was a completely different scenario than his debut in 1999.

Gone are the insults he had to endure in his fight with Ana María Torres at the end of the last century. Phrases like go wash dishes at home, transmuted on Friday into expressions of respect and admiration. It was a different night and with an audience completely dedicated to their path to professional retirement.