World featherweight title · 1995
Manuel Medina would not fight your fight
He turned professional at 14 and was never known as a big puncher. In Sacramento, Manuel Medina outworked the WBC featherweight champion and took his title on a split decision.
Alejandro González had a good year going into September 1995. In January, in San Antonio, he had taken the WBC featherweight title from the unbeaten Kevin Kelley, landing so many heavy shots that Kelley's corner threw in the towel in the tenth round. He then beat the former champion Louie Espinoza on points and stopped Tony Green in the ninth. They called him La Cobrita, the little cobra.
His third defence, at the Convention Center in Sacramento on 23 September, was against another Mexican: Manuel Medina.
An unusual fighter
Medina came from Tecuala, in the state of Nayarit, and had his first professional fight in 1985, at the age of 14. By 1995 he was already a former world champion, having won the IBF featherweight title from Troy Dorsey in 1991 and defended it four times.
He did not win fights in the way most champions do. One writer described him as a solid all-rounder who did not excel in any single area. What he had was a long-limbed, high work-rate style that was, in that writer's words, "a nightmare for certain fighters". He stood 5ft 8in. He threw a lot of punches, and he made opponents deal with that volume for as long as the fight lasted.
Sacramento
That was the problem he set González. The fight was close, and the judges could not agree on it. When the cards were read out, it was a split decision. Two of the three had Medina ahead, and he was champion again, this time with the WBC.
His nickname was Mantecas, which means lard. It did not describe a fighter who looked especially dangerous, and that was partly the point. Medina rarely looked like the more talented man in the ring. He was often the one still working at the end of it.
Win, lose, win again
The reign was short. In his first defence, in Tokyo that December, Medina lost the title to Luisito Espinosa on a unanimous decision.
By the time his career was over, he had won five world titles across three different organisations, the last of them the WBO featherweight title against Scott Harrison in 2003. He fought professionally from 1985 to 2008 and finished with 67 wins.
That record says something about how he did it. He was rarely the most exciting fighter on the bill. He was, for the right opponent, a nightmare.