Pernell Whitaker vs. Julio César Chávez, billed as The Fight, was a professional boxing match contested on September 10, 1993, for the WBC welterweight title.
Chavez came out pressing the attack, and in the first two rounds Whitaker backpedaled to his right and popped the occasional right jab, keeping Chavez out of tempo. Roars went up whenever Chavez landed a punch, and throughout the vast dome the crowds waved the red, white and green flag of Mexico. Chavez was already having difficulty solving Whitaker's elusive movement.
Whitaker came out for the third with a crisper, sharper jab, nailing a pursuing Chavez with three stingers in a row. At once he settled into what he called his "sleeping style," a kind of slippery, loosey-goosey way of carrying himself that made it harder for Chavez to get to him. By the fourth round Whitaker was in control of the fight as Chavez grew increasingly frustrated with his opponent's style.
In the fifth Chavez's corner began yelling at him to renew the attack, and he charged back to score one of his best rounds of the bout. In one flurry he landed two sharp right-hand leads, another left to the body and a third right that had Whitaker, for the only time in the fight, looking chastened and doubtful in the middle of the ring.
Yet Whitaker clearly won the sixth through the eighth, as the crowd fell ominously silent and the flags stopped fluttering. Whitaker had done what he had promised to do: "I like to go on the road and take the hometown fans out of it," he had said earlier in the week.
In the sixth Whitaker accidentally caught Chavez with a low left to the groin. Referee Joe Cortez stopped the fight to give Chavez a minute to kick away the pain, but Chavez needed more than that to shake off the larger effect Whitaker was having on him. Whitaker had taken away most of Chavez's arsenal of punches, save for the occasional right-hand lead, and Chavez had nothing close to Whitaker's jab. Chavez never mounted a sustained attack to the body, and he began to appear not only feckless and confused but also desperate and despondent as the rounds rolled by. He was losing the fight, and he couldn't come up with anything to turn it around. Chavez did win the ninth, scoring several times with left hooks and right hands.
Chavez came out fast in the tenth, but Whitaker blunted his attack with sharp lefts, and by the round's closing moments Chavez seemed to be underwater. Whitaker won it. He took the eleventh even more easily, and for most of the final round he moved and backpedaled out of harm's way while a tired Chavez chased after him. At the bell, looking perplexed, Chavez raised his arms in a wishful gesture.
In one of the most disputed decisions in boxing history, the fight was declared a majority draw. Whitaker would dominate with his jab landing 130 to Chávez's, and had the edge in overall punches with 311 punches landed compared to 220 for Chávez. However, when the fight went to the judge's scorecards only one judge, Jack Woodruff, had scored the fight in Whitaker's favor at 115–113. The other two judge's, Mickey Vann and Franz Marti, would score the fight even at 115–115
