As Bad Bunny walked through a makeshift sugarcane field on Sunday night at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, Calif., for the Apple Music halftime show, he passed by several Latino scenes — from a man selling piraguas, to elderly men playing dominoes to a taco stand. At one point in that sequence, the “Nuevayol” artist evaded punches from combating boxers.
That moment not only pointed to the love of boxing across the Americas, but also specifically showed one pugilist wearing shorts with the Puerto Rican flag colors on them and the other rocking Mexico-colored shorts.
And those weren’t pretend fighters, either. It was 23-year-old Puerto Rican light middleweight champion Xander Zayas and undefeated Mexican American boxer Emiliano Vargas.
“This was the greatest experience of my entire life,” Zayas told ESPN this week. “I expected to become a unified world champion, but I never expected to be part of the Super Bowl.”
Zayas and Vargas squaring off stood in for the storied boxing rivalry between the two prizefighting countries.
The feud goes back more than 90 years, when Puerto Rico’s Sixto Escobar became the island’s first world-title holder after defeating Mexican fighter Rodolfo Casanova by knockout in the ninth round on May 7, 1934.
In February 1960, Carlos Ortiz became Puerto Rico’s second world champion with a 10th-round knockout of Mexico’s Raymundo Torres at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. Ortiz entered the match undefeated with a 31-0 record.
Mexico landed its first big win in the rivalry after Pipino Cuevas beat welterweight champion Angel Espada by technical knockout (TKO) in the second round in July 1976. The duo faced off the next year at a bout in San Juan where Cuevas again won — Espada was forced to retire from the match after suffering a double-fractured jaw. The trilogy capped off in December 1979 when Cuevas defeated Espada by TKO in the 10th round.
The feud between the two countries further escalated in 1978 when Puerto Rican champion Wilfredo Gómez and Mexican boxer Carlos Zárate fought for the super bantamweight title in an event hosted in San Juan. Gómez defeated Zárate via TKO in the fifth round to retain his title.
The Boricua pugilist rode a prolonged winning streak heading into his match with Mexican fighter Salvador Sánchez in August 1981. Ahead of the bout Gómez evoked the Mexican revolutionary Emiliano Zapata when he said that he’d finish the contest “standing or dead, but never on my knees.”
Gómez would go on to lose the fight in the 10th round by TKO after being left on his hands and knees by Sánchez. He would later get redemption when he defeated Mexican boxer Lupe Pintor via 14th-round TKO in a December 1992 marathon match.
Mexico’s greatest boxer, Julio César Chávez, entered the fray with a fourth-round knockout of Puerto Rican fighter Javier Fragoso in a May 1983 match in San Juan. In a December 1986 bout at Madison Square Garden, Chávez defeated the island’s fighter Juan Laporte by unanimous decision.
In November 1987, Puerto Rican champion Edwin Rosario and Chávez squared off in the “Duel in the Desert.” Heading into the match Rosario had criticized the strength of the Mexican boxer’s previous competition. Chávez went on to defeat Rosario by TKO in the 11th round.
The Sonora-born champion improved to 67-0 after forcing the Boricua boxer Sammy Fuentes to retire from their 1989 match in the 10th round. A win against Puerto Rico’s Angel Hernandez in April 1992 brought Chávez to a 80-0 record.
In a marquee matchup dubbed “the fight for it all,” Chávez fought Puerto Rican legend Héctor “Macho” Camacho in Las Vegas on Sept. 12, 1992. The competition went the distance with Chávez winning in a unanimous decision.
“If I lose, they won’t let me back in Mexico,” Chavez jokingly told reporters in the week leading up to the fight.
The rivalry carried on through the ‘90s as Puerto Rico’s Félix Trinidad handed Mexican American boxer Oscar De La Hoya — who had previously defeated Chávez —his first professional loss in a September 1999 fight by majority decision.
“I have watched the fight seven times and I still don’t understand how he won the fight,” De La Hoya told The Times in the days after his loss.
“I was happy [toward the end of the fight]. I was celebrating. I knew I won more than six rounds. … Even [my father] was happy. I’ve never ever seen him like that.”
Mexican fighter Fernando Vargas — the father of the Mexican American boxer featured in the halftime show — took on Trinidad in December 2020 with two federations’ light middleweight titles on the line.
Trinidad won so decidedly after a 12th-round TKO that Vargas was taken to the hospital as a precautionary measure after going down five times.
“This was my toughest fight,” conceded Trinidad — who had predicted before the match that this would be his easiest fight — immediately after the brawl. “I want to say that Fernando Vargas is a great champion. But I knew I was ahead and didn’t need the knockout in the 12th round.”
In the 2000s, the bad blood continued when Puerto Rican fighter Miguel Cotto went up against Tijuana’s Antonio Margarito. The two first fought in a July 2008 bout where Margarito won by TKO in the 11th round.
“Obviously, Cotto is a strong fighter,” Margarito said in the aftermath of the match. “But as the fight went on I told my corner I would wear him down and then knock him down. I told them [that] the knockout would come and the knockout came. … He never hurt me, really.”
Six months after Margarito battered Cotto, a California State Athletic Commission inspector confiscated hardened inserts caked with plaster of Paris in Margarito’s hand wraps before a welterweight title fight against Shane Mosley. Margarito’s wraps were changed before he lost the fight to Mosley.
Margarito and his trainer, Javier Capetillo, had their licenses revoked in February 2009 by the California commission for one year. The Mexican fighter was reinstated in several states including Texas and New York in the two years following the scandal.
Cotto and his advisors claimed that a photograph showed evidence Margarito used illegally hardened hand wraps in the 2008 match to help him defeat the previously unbeaten Cotto.
The duo held a rematch three years later in which Cotto won via a ninth-round TKO.
The feud has carried on into the 2020s as Mexican boxer Canelo Alvarez defeated Puerto Rico’s Edgar Berlanga in a September 2024 fight.
Berlanga lost for the first time in his career, dropping to 22-1-0.
“I did good. Now what are they going to say? They said I don’t fight young fighters,” said Álvarez while still in the ring. “They always talk, but I’m the best fighter in the world.”
Zayas — who appeared in the halftime show — left his mark on the ongoing rivalry when he bested Mexican boxer Jorge Garcia Perez in a unanimous decision in July 2025.
Overall, Puerto Rico has amassed 84 wins all time in the rivalry while Mexico has 74 wins.
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