The crowd of 4,818 may have been smaller than at some of the other fights the MGM has held, but the crowd was every bit as loud as a crowd three times as big. Rafael Marquez clearly had a large part of the crowd in his corner, but at the end of the night it was Juan Manuel Lopez’s Puerto Rican crowd that cheered the loudest.

One of the loudest cheers of the night had nothing to do with any of the action inside the ring. It came when Puerto Rican legend Tito Trinidad was shown on the big screens inside the arena, shortly before “Juanma” came to the ring. It’s unclear if Lopez needed the motivation of perhaps the greatest Puerto Rican fighter in history, but it certainly didn’t hurt.

From the start of the fight Marquez appeared to be the bigger, stronger, and faster man. Over the first three rounds Lopez built a solid lead, using his speed to get in and out of range while landing solid shots, leaving some of the crowd wondering how Marquez refused to fall.

Finally in the fourth round the man who refused to fall, Marquez, landed a vicious left hook that knocked Lopez loopy, but not to the ground. Instead of using the ring to try to regain his composure, Lopez instead invited Marquez to continue brawling, yelling at him, “Come on, come on!” Marquez obviously obliged. Marquez won the round by an even bigger margin, because at the end of the round, “Juanma” was deducted a point by referee Tony Weeks for holding.

This would be far and away Marquez’s best round of the fight. The 5th round was close, but Lopez used the first half of that round to regain his composure, and his legs. By the end of the round he was back to using the same method he used early in the fight.

Beginning in the sixth round, Marquez started to take a bit of a beating, and a number of people in press row expected the fight to either be finished by Lopez or stopped by the ref or the corner at anytime. Lopez finished the sixth round with a big uppercut that left Marquez reeling in the corner.

The 7th and 8th rounds were more one-sided. Every once in a while Marquez had a flurry that reminded the crowd of his great fights with Israel Vasquez, and that he was never out until the end, but no magic would be found in his gloves Saturday night.

As the bell started to begin the ninth round, Marquez’s corner said his man wouldn’t be coming out, citing a shoulder injury. At the press conference, promoter Bob Arum said that Marquez had a shoulder injury going into the fight, and re-injured it in the 3rd. This information was news to most of the assembled media. Either way, nobody disagreed with the Marquez corner stopping the fight, as with every passing moment the fight was getting more and more uneven.

Lopez made it clear at the press conference that he thought he was the best featherweight in the world, not Yuriorkis Gamboa. According to Bob Arum, he may get to prove that soon, as they are expected to fight in June of next year.

Marquez’s long-time plans are unknown. When asked when, or if, he’ll fight again, Arum replied, “How am I supposed to know, I’m not a doctor.” For the short-term, Marquez will look to recover after this tough fight Saturday night.