Guillermo Rigondeaux fights Liborio Solis having first been ignored then forgotten

Guillermo Rigondeaux’s greatest nights have been and gone. Too few people noticed them.

Once, the diminutive Cuban could lay claim to being the greatest boxer in the world. But his nationality, language, size and skillset worked against him. He won consecutive gold medals at the 2000 and 2004 Olympics and then turned professional, soon unifying the super-bantamweight division. It was never going to be enough. He was categorised as not fan friendly and studiously avoided by those fearful of his power and sceptical of his profile. Until, in December 2017 when he was already in the twilight of his career, he moved up two weight classes to fight the younger, bigger and better managed Vasyl Lomachenko.

You already know how that one went. The previously undefeated Rigondeaux was quite stunningly battered into submission.

Rigondeaux returns to the ring this weekend to fight Liborio Solís for a secondary world title back down at bantamweight. In the build-up to the fight, he has insisted that he is looking forward to another long reign as world champion. It is not generally advisable to disagree with men like Rigondeaux, who can render opponents unconscious in the blink of an eye. But that boast is, with all due respect, fanciful. Rigondeaux – who is widely suspected by promoters to be older than his given age of 39 – does not have many years at the top left. He is running out of time.

That much was obvious from his previous fight, when the unjust criticisms of his deft, defensive style finally became too much to bare. Last June, Rigondeaux abandoned the strategies that elevated him to the summit of his sport by standing blithely in the pocket for an eight-round war with the respectable if unexceptional Julio Ceja. The Mexican was the kind of boxer the best version of Rigondeaux could have beaten with one hand behind his back. Instead, he bowed his head in grim defiance and invited punishment, absorbing an unnecessary amount of shots before finally ending the fight with a hard left hook that reminded those watching of better times.

“Rigondeaux may not be the slick technician he used to be, and for fight fans, that might be great news,” began a report of the fight on one popular boxing website. That narrative has been peddled again ahead of Saturday. It’s rubbish. Watching Rigondeaux calculatingly lower his standards was as disappointing and discombobulating as seeing Gordon Ramsey stroll into McDonalds, or Anthony Hopkins appear in your local village hall pantomime. Anybody can fight. Precious few can box. And fewer still can box like Rigondeaux.

In his pomp he was a finely-tuned freak of nature, the slickest of southpaws who was as frugal as he was formidable. One of his more bewitching party pieces was that old Cuban boxing programme classic: to stand menacingly in the shadow of his opponent’s outstretched arms throwing phantom punches, before then stepping in and landing with the very same combination. The flutter of the assassin’s cape before the swish of the blade. He did not need to worry about telegraphing what was coming next because nobody who shared a ring with him knew how to stop it.

His punch placement was meticulous. His counter punching punishing. And, when he was able to land half-decent fights, he invariably won them in style. Nonito Donaire was utterly dismantled and lost a wide points decision. Joseph Agbeko didn’t win a round. And Hisashi Amagasa — who fought Rigondeaux in Osaka for the WBA and WBO titles — could do nothing to avoid the Cuban’s well-honed combinations. His trainer sensibly stopped the fight before the final bell.

But it was his defence, so similar in style to Floyd Mayweather’s, that made him one of the finest fighters of his – or any – generation. A master at establishing range and always careful to remain a considerable distance from his opponent, when at close quarters Rigondeaux would bend his knees and back impossibly low to the canvas, with all the leisured ease of a sunbather leaning into an inflatable lilo. He would then cover both sides of his head with his gloves and roll back, presenting the smallest possible target for his opponent to hit.

And until Lomachenko they were rarely able to.

Rigondeaux had been dropped before in his career – Donaire and Amagasa had both punished him for momentary lapses in concentration, while he was first felled by Ricardo Cordoba in a narrow fight that he won on a split decision. But the Lomachenko beating was something else entirely. Never before, in either the amateur or professional ranks, had he quite so demonstrably lost control. But Lomachenko was too much. What use is one of the most sophisticated defence systems in professional boxing if your bigger, stronger and fundamentally better opponent is able to pepper you from distance and casually shrug off your attempts to tie-up?

The statistics were damning. Rigondeaux failed to land as many as four punches in all of the fight’s six rounds. At the end of the sixth, he remained on his stool, his chin resting on his chest and his eyes fixed downwards. He claimed he had injured the top of his hand. Others accused him of quitting. And so what if he did? The fight was lost. The opportunity of a lifetime had gone. And he was fighting only to avoid serious injury.

The fight left Rigondeaux at a crossroads. Many assumed he would retire. But it wasn’t to be the end. After a year out of the sport, he returned with a tuneup against the 16-8 Giovanni Delgado. Rigondeaux knew the paydays were on the verge of drying up. He was ready to play to the gallery.

The question is whether he will do so again against Solís on Saturday night. It is a fight he should — and most likely will — win. Whether he has a future in the division is utterly dependent on how he does it. Either way: his best days are gone. And it is to the sport’s shame that he has forever been held at arm’s length for his inability to mutter a few boxing clichés into the camera and the crime of doing his best not to get hit.