No matter how bad things got for Israel Vazquez, you couldn’t wipe the smile off his face. You couldn’t stop him from seeing the humor in small things. You couldn’t get him to feel sorry for himself.
Shortly after Vazquez’s boxing career ended in 2010, the former 122-pound champion was losing his vision in his right eye, an injury caused by the punches he took in the ring. Mauricio Sulaiman, the president of the WBC, brought him to a doctor in Mexico City.
“They told him, ‘You’re going to lose your eye,’” Sulaiman recalled this week. “But they said, ‘We’re going to find a cornea transplant.’ So Israel was very happy. He went back to California. The doctor called me and he says, ‘We have the cornea ready.’ I wrote a message to Israel, and I thought I wrote to him, ‘Your transplant of the cornea is ready, so let’s plan your trip to Mexico City.’ And he responds to me, ‘Oh, this is such good news – but do you know when the cornea is going to be ready? Because you told me the corneta is ready.’”
“Corneta” is the Spanish word for cornet, a brass instrument.
“It was just so funny,” Sulaiman continued. “It was a spell-check error. But that was Israel. Always smiling, humble, innocent. Always appreciative, never looking for anything.”
Vazquez’s longtime manager, Frank Espinoza, describes him the same way, and recalled a specific way the ex-fighter reacted every time he encountered another health problem. Whether it was during his five-plus-year battle with multiple sclerosis or in the face of his cancer diagnosis last October, Vazquez always had the same response when Espinoza would ask how he could help: “Don’t worry, Frank. I’ll be OK.”
Words don’t make it so, of course, and on December 3, about three weeks shy of his 47th birthday, the man known as “Magnifico” died of lung cancer at his home in Huntington Park, California. He left behind a wife, Laura, and three school-aged kids, Israel Jnr, Anthony and Zoe.
And he left behind a legacy as one of the most fan-friendly warriors of his era – winner of the Fight of the Year twice, in 2007 and 2008, against his great rival Rafael Marquez, to go along with several semi-forgotten scorchers against the likes of Jhonny Gonzalez and Oscar Larios.
“He had this drive in him to be world champion,” Espinoza reflected. “You know, he was such a humble kid. But he had this warrior spirit about him. I loved that about him, how he had these two sides. He was a gentleman outside the ring, but he was a lion inside the ring, and that’s what made him so special.”
Against certain opponents, however, warrior spirit is not enough, and the final chapters of Vazquez’s story are heartbreaking.
The vision problems – he eventually got a glass eye – took a backseat in 2019 when he received the MS diagnosis. Say what you will about alphabet organizations and some of their rankings and rules, but the WBC has a well-earned reputation for looking after ex-fighters, and from 2019 onward, the sanctioning body flew Vazquez from L.A. to Mexico City a couple of times every year for exams and treatment.
Last year, though, manager Espinoza took Israel out to lunch and observed how rail-thin he had become, estimating the former 122lbs champ couldn’t have weighed more than 100lbs. A badly weakened Vazquez checked in to the hospital in October, and he told Sulaiman that it was thought he may have tuberculosis or pneumonia.
It turned out it was far worse than that.
“I spoke to his wife,” Espinoza recalled, “and she was crying. She was telling me that the doctor said he only had six months to live. That was about the worst news I’ve ever gotten.”
They found a small cancerous tumor in Vazquez’s lung and a much larger one in his pelvis area. Sulaiman spoke to the doctors.
“By the assessment, to operate on that cancer would have been inhuman,” Sulaiman said. “They would have had to remove his leg, without any guarantee of survival – it would have been a horrible suffering for nothing. So they decided to go home. We provided all the care at home: oxygen, medicine, palliative care for pain and for those difficult symptoms.”
The WBC also started a GoFundMe that raised nearly $45,000, along with running an auction in November that raised about $20,000.
Espinoza last spoke to Vazquez about a week before he died, and of course when asked how he was doing, Israel replied, “Oh, I’m OK, Frank.” But he was confined to his bed, couldn’t stand, had to be pushed to the bathroom in a wheelchair. Mentally, though, he was all there until the very end.
No parent should outlive their children, but Vazquez’s did. His parents were in Mexico when Israel got sick and didn’t have passports or visas to visit their dying son, so Sulaiman called in favors and got them temporary humanitarian visas. “They spent one week with their son,” Sulaiman said, “and he passed away in his father’s arms.”
After being given six months to live, Vazquez lasted only about two months.
“He went very fast,” Sulaiman said, “which is a blessing, because he was suffering. But, you know, he never complained. He never said, ‘Why did this happen to me?’ All he wanted was to take care of his family and the future of his kids, their education.”
To that end, another good Samaritan stepped up – boxing fan Reza Torkzadeh and his California-based law firm TorkLaw paid off the remainder of Laura Vazquez’s mortgage and set up a fund for the kids’ college educations.
Of course, there’s much more to Vazquez’s story than the tragedies with which it concluded. The many triumphs that preceded demand to be remembered.
“Magnifico” first caught the eye of L.A.-based manager Espinoza when, still a teenager, he fought Oscar Larios on April 12, 1997 in Mexico City. Larios was 20-0, Vazquez was 11-1. Throwing the shorter, sharper punches throughout a frenetically paced first round, Vazquez knocked “Chololo” cold – as in, flat on his back for about five minutes – with a right hand just under two minutes after the opening bell.
Espinoza tracked Vazquez down, developed a rapport with the young boxer and, about a year later, brought him to the US to take on nondescript opponent Antonio Ramirez at the Sycuan Resort & Casino in El Cajon, California. Vazquez did not look his best in winning a six-round decision.
“He won the fight,” recalled Espinoza, “but his defense was … well, terrible. That was his downfall sometimes. I would joke that he’d get mad if you missed him. But after that, the promoter decided this kid is not the real deal and wanted to send him back to Mexico. But I told Israel, ‘Listen, Israel, I believe in you. I really think you’ve got what it takes. Come and live with me.’”
For the next few years, Vazquez stayed with Espinoza and his wife and kids in L.A. as the young fighter built up his record.
Other than a split decision loss to Marcos Licona in Las Vegas in March of ’99, Vazquez won all of his fights, and he was 32-2 when he and Larios met for a second time atop an ESPN “Friday Night Fights” card on May 17, 2002. It was arguably the second-best fight of 2002. It was inarguably the second-best of that weekend – the very next night, Micky Ward outpointed Arturo Gatti in their classic first battle.
Larios got his revenge, stopping Vazquez in the 12th round of a sensational slugfest. But even after a setback like that, “I never stopped believing in Israel,” Espinoza noted.
Vazquez bounced right back. A year later, he stopped former titlist Jorge Eliecer Julio in the 10th round of a scheduled 10. In March 2004, he stopped Jose Luis Valbuena in the 12th round of a scheduled 12 to win a vacant title. He successfully defended against Art Simonyan and Armando Guerrero, then, in December 2005, stopped Larios in just three rounds to win their rubber match.
In June 2006, Vazquez stopped Ivan Hernandez in four rounds, and he followed that with a fight that seemed like it might be the most dramatic he would ever have. On September 16, 2006, on an HBO Pay-Per-View card headlined by Marco Antonio Barrera, Vazquez faced countryman Jhonny Gonzalez. Vazquez was knocked down in both the fourth and sixth rounds, and was arguably getting shut out through six, but that warrior spirit for which he would become famous prevailed. He sent Gonzalez to the deck in the seventh and, still trailing on Harold Lederman’s unofficial scorecard by six points, dramatically forced a stoppage in Round 10.
And that set the stage for the series for which Vazquez is best remembered – three fights in 364 days against Rafael Marquez, each one somehow more thrilling than the last.
Vazquez surrendered in the seventh round of their first fight, unable to breathe – not because of a broken nose, as was widely believed, but because of busted cartilage in his nose.
“The doctor recommended surgery,” Espinoza recalled, “and said he’d be good to fight again in six months. I’ll never forget what the doctor said going into the surgery: ‘After this, he’ll breathe like a two-lane highway.’”
It turned out Vazquez needed only five months before he was ready to rematch Marquez, and on August 4, 2007, Magnifico avenged his defeat by sixth-round TKO in the 2007 Fight of the Year.
Then came the 2008 Fight of the Year, in the rubber match the following March 1. Needing to win the 12th round to pull out a draw at the end of an absolutely stirring war, Vazquez went one step beyond, knocking Marquez into the ropes for an official knockdown with just five seconds left on the clock to earn a split decision win.
In a decade overflowing with timeless trilogies – Gatti-Ward, Barrera-Erik Morales, Manny Pacquiao-Morales – none topped Vazquez-Marquez.
Unfortunately, it didn’t end there. Vazquez’s right eye was damaged, and he was out of the ring for 19 months, unsure if he would ever fight again. He passed the medical tests and rallied in a tougher-than-expected fight to stop Angel Priolo in October 2009.
That probably should have been the end. But Vazquez had lost hundreds of thousands of dollars in what Espinoza describes as a pyramid scheme. He needed one last payday. A sad fourth fight with Marquez on May 22, 2010, which ended inside three rounds with Vazquez’s right eye clearly unfit for combat, provided that payday.
“The trilogy with Rafael Marquez, that was one of the best I’ve ever seen,” Sulaiman reflected. “The fourth fight … that was not part of the trilogy.”
When Vazquez died in December, Marquez paid tribute to him on social media, calling him not his rival or his opponent, but “my friend and partner.”
“It was a great honor for me to have shared those battles with him,” Marquez posted, “and above all to have the fortune of having known the great human being that he was. A great warrior inside and outside the ring. I will remember you forever. I join in the pain of his family. Rest in peace, dear friend.”
After several years on the International Boxing Hall of Fame ballot, Marquez was inducted in 2023. Vazquez, who finished with a record of 44-5 (32 KOs), remains on that ballot, perhaps joining his friend and partner soon – though he won’t be around to enjoy the celebration.
If Vazquez does become a Hall of Famer someday, it will likely be his widow, Laura, accepting the honor on his behalf.
Espinoza remembers distinctly when Israel and Laura met.
“He’d moved out of my house, I set him up in an apartment with Martin Castillo, another fighter from Mexico I had at the time,” Espinoza said. “This was in the mid-2000s. They lived together, they would go to the gym together. One day I saw them, and Israel looked like he’d just gotten a haircut. And I say, ‘Hey, Israel, didn’t you just get your hair cut last week?’ He said, ‘Yeah, I did. And I went again today, and I’m going to go again in a few days.’ I go, ‘Why? Why are you going to get your hair cut, like, every three days?’ He said, ‘Because there’s a girl there that is cutting my hair and I really like her.’ It ended up being Laura. It was so funny, because, you know, his hair just kept getting shorter and shorter.”
That’s the side of Vazquez that boxing fans never knew. It was the warrior side that we saw. In his final days, the personal and the professional sides came together.
As one last gift to him, Sulaiman and his organization paid $10,000 for temporary rights to the Marquez trilogy, and the fights were made available for streaming on DAZN.
“In his bed, he watched the trilogy with his kids,” Sulaiman said. “The kids were so proud – they had never experienced watching those fights with their dad. He was so happy and proud of winning two of the three.
“And the next day he passed away, having just watched the fights with his kids. So he died as a champion.”
Eric Raskin is a veteran boxing journalist with more than 25 years of experience covering the sport for such outlets as BoxingScene, ESPN, Grantland, Playboy, and The Ring (where he served as managing editor for seven years). He also co-hosted The HBO Boxing Podcast, Showtime Boxing with Raskin & Mulvaney, The Interim Champion Boxing Podcast with Raskin & Mulvaney, and Ring Theory. He has won three first-place writing awards from the BWAA, for his work with The Ring, Grantland, and HBO. Outside boxing, he is the senior editor of CasinoReports and the author of 2014’s The Moneymaker Effect. He can be reached on X, BlueSky, or LinkedIn, or via email at [email protected].
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