Chávez beat Meldrick Taylor with two seconds left, then filled the Azteca

On 13 May 1989, at the Great Western Forum in Inglewood, Julio César Chávez fought Roger Mayweather for the second time. He had stopped him in two rounds at super-featherweight in 1985. Since then Mayweather had won the WBC light-welterweight title, and by 1989 he was called "The Mexican Assassin" for the six Mexican fighters he had recently beaten. Chávez was 62–0 and a win would make him a champion at a third weight.

It went ten rounds. Chávez led 99–90, 98–90 and 98–90 when Mayweather, in the words of Boxing247, "told his corner he was done, that he could not go on". Chávez took the WBC light-welterweight title. The damage had come from his body punching. Five more wins followed, including WBC defences against Sammy Fuentes at Caesars Palace and Alberto de las Mercedes Cortes in Mexico City. He went into the Meldrick Taylor fight 68–0.

Thunder Meets Lightning

Taylor was from Philadelphia and had won the featherweight gold medal at the 1984 Olympics. On 3 September 1988 he stopped James "Buddy" McGirt in the 12th round to win the IBF light-welterweight title. He was 23, 24–0–1, and Chávez would be his third defence. Lou Duva was his co-manager and trainer, and Dan Duva was in the camp too.

The fight was billed as "Thunder Meets Lightning": Chávez's power against Taylor's hand speed. It was for both belts, at the Las Vegas Hilton on 17 March 1990, and both men were unbeaten. Chávez, 27, weighed 139½lb and Taylor 139¾lb. Chávez was paid $1.4 million, the most of his career. According to UPI, HBO had paid Don King nearly $12 million for a package of six fights ending with this one. The crowd was 9,130, the referee was Richard Steele, and the judges were Jerry Roth, Dave Moretti and Chuck Giampa.

Eleven rounds

Taylor took control early and built a lead. He said afterwards that he had blurred vision from the third round and could not see Chávez's right hand. Years later Steele described the difference between them. "Meldrick could win fights on points, as he was doing in this fight," he said. "But it was like a boy against a man."

After 11 rounds Roth had Taylor ahead 108–101 and Moretti had him ahead 107–102. Giampa had Chávez in front, 105–104.

In the corner before the last round, according to Sports Illustrated, Lou Duva was hunched over Taylor's puffy, battered face, screaming at him above the noise of the crowd. "Get close to him! Stay inside. Don't stand up and let him hit you. Do like you've been doing: Put your head on his chest and keep turning him around."

The last round

With a minute to go Taylor backed away and stood up, and Chávez staggered him with an overhand right to the face. With 25 seconds left another right caught him, and Taylor reeled along the ropes. Sports Illustrated described what came next. "Setting himself, Chàvez drove a vicious right over the jab. It struck Taylor on his left cheek and sent him collapsing on his back in a neutral corner, the back of his head nearly striking the ring post. He reached out his hands to grab a strand of rope."

Taylor got up, and Steele gave him the mandatory eight count. On top of the ring post a red light had begun to flash, meaning fewer than 10 seconds were left. It was going on and off behind and above Taylor's left shoulder, and Steele said afterwards he had not seen it. He asked Taylor, "Are you O.K.?" Taylor did not answer. He said later that he could not hear the question above the noise. He also said that he had turned to look at Lou Duva during the count, and admitted that Duva trying to get into the ring may have taken his attention.

Lou Duva had started climbing the steps to Taylor's corner, screaming at Steele that one of his assistants had told him time had already run out. A Nevada State Athletic Commission inspector, Kenny Bayless, went after him. Had Duva set foot in the ring, Steele could have disqualified Taylor.

"Only two seconds were left in the fight," Sports Illustrated reported, "when Steele raised his arms in the air and waved the bout to an end." The official time was 2:58 of the 12th round. Chávez kept the WBC title, took Taylor's IBF belt and was 69–0.

"He had no right to stop it"

Steele said he had not known how much time was left. "I don't think about time when I'm in the ring," he said. "I think about the fighter's condition." He added: "I saw a great fighter who was beaten. His eyes, his condition, told me that he'd had enough. Meldrick Taylor got up, but I was not going to let him take another punch." When Duva confronted him, Steele did not respond. He turned and walked away.

"It's a hell of a way to lose a fight," Lou Duva said. "After 11 rounds, two minutes and 58 seconds. Steele took the fight away from us. He had no right to stop it." Dan Duva said: "Meldrick was up at five, and he was looking straight into Richard Steele's eyes. Sugar Ray Leonard was down two times against Thomas Hearns, and they let him fight. It was clearly a bad call."

"My head was really clear," Taylor said. "I wasn't wobbly. It was a very traumatic thing for me. It was ludicrous."

"He was faster than I. He was stronger than I," Chávez said. "I had the idea he would fight that way [inside]. I could not develop myself the way I wanted. I was very surprised at his hand speed. Meldrick Taylor deserves a rematch. He is a great fighter."

Taylor spent the night in Valley Hospital. Doctors found a small fracture in the bone behind his left eye, and he was given a transfusion to replace the two pints of blood he had lost. It was later reported that he had been urinating blood.

Twenty years on, Steele said: "He did not respond. He did not make the 10 seconds. He did not beat the count." By 2010 Duva told it differently. "People condemned me, more or less, because I jumped up on the stairs and I hollered to the referee to make Chavez go back into the corner," he said. Had Steele done that, he argued, the two seconds would have gone.

The Ring made it the Fight of the Year for 1990, and later the Fight of the Decade.

Twelve more wins

Between Taylor and September 1992 Chávez won 12 fights, in Madrid, Atlantic City, Las Vegas and all over Mexico: Culiacán, Mazatlán, Mexico City, Hermosillo, La Paz. Only Lonnie Smith, at The Mirage in September 1991, lasted the distance.

After one of those defences Chávez shouted "you're next!" from ringside at Héctor "Macho" Camacho. They met at the Thomas & Mack Center in Las Vegas on 12 September 1992, and each was paid $3 million. Chávez was 81–0. "They will lynch me, I couldn't return to Mexico," he said beforehand. "The Mexican people would never forgive me if I lost." Camacho said: "I have better combinations, speed, lateral movement -- the things that frustrate Chavez." For 12 rounds Chávez came forward and Camacho retreated and held, while the crowd booed the holding and chanted "Duro! Duro!" By the eighth Camacho's left eye was badly swollen. Chávez won 117–111, 119–110 and 120–107. When he got home, President Carlos Salinas de Gortari sent the car reserved for the Pope to bring him from the airport to Los Pinos, the presidential residence.

Tijuana cab drivers

Greg Haugen was 32, a former IBF lightweight champion and a former WBO light-welterweight champion, who had lost to Camacho in 1991. "The way I see it," he said, in the words The Fight City printed, "sixty of the guys he fought were just Tijuana cab drivers that my mother could have knocked out." He said there weren't 130,000 Mexicans who could afford tickets. Boxing News quoted him too: "Look at his first 50 fights. If you recognise those names, you are a boxing historian. They're nothing but palookas."

"I really hate him bad," Chávez said before the fight. "When he looks at me, I want to vomit. I am going to give him the worst beating of his life. I am going to make him swallow the words that came out of his dirty mouth."

The Azteca, 20 February 1993

The card at the Estadio Azteca in Mexico City was billed as the "Grand Slam of Boxing". Terry Norris, Azumah Nelson and Michael Nunn all fought on it. Chávez was 84–0 and defending his WBC title. Tickets cost from 5 to 2,750 pesos and sold out, and Chávez gave away 4,000 to children and low-income families. The Associated Press reported "a crowd of more than 130,000 roaring fans", announced as the largest in the history of boxing. It took Chávez 12 minutes to get from his dressing room to the ring.

The referee was Joe Cortez. Twenty-five seconds into the fight Chávez put Haugen down with a straight right. He "pounded his face lopsided", AP reported, and about 1:45 into the fifth round Haugen went down again from a left hook, a right hook and a right to the head. Cortez stopped it at 2:02 of the round. It was the first time in 37 professional fights that Haugen had failed to go the distance, and Chávez's 85th win in 85 fights. That night Jimmy Lennon Jr called him "Gran Campeón Mexicano" in public for the first time.

"Greg Haugen deserved to be punished like this," Chávez said. "He said some bad things, and he deserved it." To Haugen he said: "Now you know I don't fight with taxi drivers."

"They must have been tough taxi drivers," said Haugen. In 2025 he called the defeat "the biggest regret of my life". "I didn't really train a lot," he said. "Still today, I kick myself in the ass for that fight."

Chávez won twice more that spring. On 10 September 1993 he went to the Alamodome in San Antonio to fight Pernell Whitaker. He was 87–0.