For a moment, Mexican boxers flirted with their best result in this discipline at the Pan American Games in more than half a century. In the end, that couldn’t be the case.

Marco Verde won a gold medal, but Miguel Martínez did not follow in his footsteps on Saturday and finished with a silver medal for the Mexicans who were looking to clinch two gold medals in a continental event for the first time since Cali 1971.

Verde had no problem defeating Dominican José Rodríguez 5-0 in the Santiago 2023 super-welterweight division, in a fight held in the morning in the ring of the Chilean Olympic Committee’s sports training center.

“This is part of the awakening of Mexican boxing,” said an excited Verde. “We have a great boxing team, we are fierce fighters, we have a lot of heart and a big desire to succeed and we want to show it.”

In the afternoon, Martínez lost 5-0 to the Canadian Wyatt Sanford in the super lightweight and ended the possibility of winning two gold medals as happened in 1971, when Pedro Flores and Juan Francisco García achieved this feat for the Aztecs.

“The results were not enough for a gold medal, there are still things to improve, nothing more. Sometimes we win, sometimes we lose, but we put on a great show,” Martínez added.

In addition to the gold and silver medals obtained on Saturday, on the last day of boxing, Mexico won a bronze medal among women with Citlalli Ortiz.

“I wanted the gold medal, but unfortunately things didn’t work out for me, I would have loved to give it to my country,” Ortiz said.

Even though the two gold medals were not awarded, it was a better performance for the Mexican delegation than the one achieved four years ago at Lima 2019, where they left with only three bronze medals .

Moreover, Verde and Martínez have already obtained their visa for the Paris 2024 Olympic Games while Ortiz will have to fight in other qualifications to achieve it.

“They were satisfactory results, a few Olympic places were obtained, but I wanted the other gold medal and we squeezed it,” Martínez said. “No way, that’s how it happens, you have to learn a little more, and give your best in training so that the results are different.”

Even if at the Olympic Games, boxing is the second discipline which brought in the most medals in Mexico, the situation is different at the Pan American Games: athletics, followed by diving and taekwondo, and boxing appears ninth in this ranking.