Retired boxer Israel Vazquez, 38, in danger of losing eye because of ring damage

Israel Vazquez’s heroic fighting efforts have come with a heavy price tag.

World Boxing Council President Mauricio Sulaiman reported Saturday that Vazquez, 38, will require surgery on his damaged eye and it might be replaced with a prosthetic.

“Doctors went to review the eye for a possible cornea transplant, and realized they can’t. The eye’s dead,” Sulaiman said.

A WBC spokeswoman close to Vazquez told The Times later Saturday that the fighter will receive two more opinions on the matter before making a final decision about how to proceed.

Vazquez, a former super-bantamweight world champion, injured his right eye in the third bout of his epic matchups with Mexican countryman Rafael Marquez on March 1, 2008, in what is now known as StubHub Center.

The series — and Vazquez’s career — was closed with a fourth fight against Marquez in May 2010 at Staples Center, but Marquez’s victory in that bout was an anticlimactic finish to what veteran boxing publicist Bill Caplan says was “the best fight series I’ve ever seen in my life — one was as ferocious as the other.”

The WBC’s charitable arm, WBC Cares, will pay for Vazquez’s surgery, which will include a procedure on his weakened left eye that should help Vazquez function without wearing the extremely thick glasses he’s worn in recent years.

“I don’t want to demonize the sport or the fight,” Vazquez told ESPN Deportes reporter Salvador Rodriguez in Mexico this week. “When they started to perform the surgeries, I didn’t take care of myself. They told me I was doing well and I tried to speed up the recovery, but my retina detached. I underwent many surgeries and they tried many methods. The thing is, I can no longer see with my right eye.”

Vazquez was stopped by Marquez after seven rounds in their toe-to-toe first bout in March 2007 in Carson. Vazquez avenged the loss five months later with a seventh-round technical knockout in Texas.

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That set the stage for the classic third bout, in which Vazquez trailed by a point on one judge’s scorecard entering the 12th round.

In the closing seconds of the 12th, after hammering Marquez with a barrage of blows, Vazquez punished a wilting Marquez in a corner and referee Pat Russell stepped in to rule a knockdown. That 10-8 round for Vazquez won him a 113-112 score on judge James Jen Kin’s card and gave him a split-decision triumph instead of a draw.

Sulaiman said Vazquez has endured seven surgeries on his eye’s detached retina.

“For me, what happened was an accident,” Vazquez said to Rodriguez. “Life has treated me well. It’s a matter of getting used to it and ensuring that people don’t see this as something that happened because of the sport, but because of an oversight.”

Follow Lance Pugmire on Twitter @latimespugmire

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