Last time
Jessica Trejo of Querétaro tangled with NABF bantamweight
champion Zulina Muñoz, she didn't last two minutes: a right
cross that caught her in the left eye set her knees
wobbling, and an uppercut followed by a left hook put her
down for the count. On Saturday evening in the Arena Azteca
Budokan, Ciudad Nezahualcóyotl, she fared slightly better,
detaining 20-year-old Zulina for all of four rounds, but the
result was no different This brings Muñoz's official record
to 14-0-0 with 13 KOs.
The irony
is that she isn't a slugger; at least, that's not the way
she thinks of herself. "I'm a disciplined fighter," she told
Miguel Scagno of Notiver, "and I try also to be a stylist in
the ring". One of Muñoz's great strengths is that her left
hand is almost as good as her right. And her finishing, as
befits a nurse, is 'clinical'. "When I've softened up an
opponent and it's time to take her out," she told Notiver,
"I like to finish with her that instant – the faster the
better."
All this in
an interview with the local press in February, when she
travelled to Veracruz to confront another of the rising
stars of Mexican boxing, 16-year-old Irazema de la Fuente –
at that time (unofficially) 8 and 0 – in her home town. A
delicate mission, as she acknowledged in an interview with
the local paper. "I'm here for one reason," she confessed to
Miguel Scagno, "which is to knock your girl out. They're
trying to line me up a world title fight and I need a
convincing result.
" I prepare
100% per cent for all my fights – for each fight as though
it were my last – but for this one, I've prepared even
harder because she's going to be fighting in front of her
own people, and that always provides extra motivation."
Irazema, a
Rubenesque young beauty "who looks more like a model," noted
Scagno, "than a boxer, such is the flawlessness of her
complexion," hadn't analyzed videos of 'La Loba' but had
watched her shadow box "which gives you a pretty good idea,"
she explained, "of the way someone fights".
"I have
tremendous mobility in the ring; I can take a punch; and I
have a powerful right hand. I also have good technique, but
if ever I do have to slug it out with someone, I can. No
one's ever beaten me and I never stop coming forward."
De la
Fuente knew that if she beat Muñoz, doors would open. But it
was not to be. As is reported elsewhere on the site, Zulina
took her in the fourth.
Sources
Text: Bobby
Carrillo [Box Noticias, Notiver]
Photos: (Zulina
Muñoz in red; Irazema de la Fuente in black)
José Cabrera Avila for Notiver
