By Thomas Gerbasi

A lot of people get nightmares at 3am. Mauricio Herrera gets them after he wakes up in the middle of the night.

“Sometimes I wake up and it’s the first thing I’ll put on,” he says, referring to his two highly controversial 2014 losses to Danny Garcia and Jose Benavidez. “I watch it, and I don’t see how they could have me losing. Then I get angry, turn it off, but then I watch it again, over and over.”

He laughs, only because he knows how that might come off to some people. If you’ve gone through two fights you know you won but didn’t get the decision, the first reaction would likely be to never look at those fights again. Herrera can’t help but watch.

“You go back and watch them and the more I watch them the more I see myself winning even more rounds and I give them less rounds,” he said. “I watch both those fights over and over and it comes to the point where it just gets me angry every time I watch them. And I still keep watching them, but it gets mad. My wife’s like ‘why do you watch it, if you’re getting angry?’”

He doesn’t have an answer. And why would he? How can he explain something that doesn’t have a reasonable explanation that would make sense to anyone? In baseball, if you score more runs than the opposing team, your team wins. Same for points in football and basketball and goals for hockey and soccer.

In boxing, if you don’t stop your opponent, three judges decide your fate using very subjective criteria. You don’t get five points for defense, five points for effective aggression, five points for clean punching, or five points for ring generalship. You get what you’re given, based on the whims of that judge on that particular night. If he or she puts more stock in power punches, a combination puncher like Herrera might be out of luck. If a fighter marches forward aimlessly and is clearly outboxed for 12 rounds, a judge might still give the aggressor the nod.

But sometimes, decisions are so twisted that almost everyone outside of those judges sees the fight in a different way. That was the case with Herrera’s majority decision loss to Garcia in March and unanimous decision defeat against Benavidez in December. Both verdicts were met with outrage from fans and the boxing media, and Herrera appreciated the support, even if it didn’t change the ultimate outcome.

“It helps,” he said. “I really love boxing. I listen to all the fans, I read a lot of comments and boxing’s a big deal to me. There’s a money side to it, but I do really love the sport. I appreciate what the fans have said, and they’re the ones that keep me motivated and keep me going.”

Even his promoter, Oscar De La Hoya, got into the act, tweeting that he was nominating Herrera for Fighter of the Year for 2014. And if you add in Herrera’s July win over Johan Perez for the interim WBA junior welterweight title, that would have been three big wins in title fights if the decisions that bookended that victory went his way.

But they didn’t, and as the weeks and months pass by, people will just say “well, that’s boxing.” That isn’t a good enough excuse anymore (if it ever was), especially when you’re talking about someone’s livelihood. And if there’s been a recent poster child for being the victim of bad decisions, it’s the 34-year-old Herrera, who won’t wow you with knockout power, but he’ll do the little things well-schooled fighters of the past would do in the ring. Add in a warrior’s spirit, and you’ve got a boxer who would have easily fit in back in the black-and-white TV days. But in the age of 3D and HD, he’s been a man out of place, at least when it comes to those judging some of his fights.

“I could go back to ShoBox with (Mike) Anchondo,” Herrera said of the disputed 2009 split decision he lost to the former junior lightweight champ. “I could have easily lost confidence or said that I didn’t even want to fight anymore and say ‘man, they’re not even seeing what’s going on.’ I study all the old fighters and it’s exactly what you said about combination punching. Nobody throws combinations – it’s always 1-2s and they’re hard punches and everybody’s going for the knockout. It sells and maybe the judges are caught up in this generation of the 1-2s, hard punches, and the young, flashy guys, and maybe they lost a little appreciation of old-school boxing and the sweet science that I try to perform.”

It leaves Herrera with a dilemma. Does he change his style to try and fit what he thinks the judges are looking for, or does he stay with what he does best and take his chances? At the moment, he’s torn.

“I thought about it and it can go either way,” he said. “With Garcia it was boxing and smothering him and going in and out. And then my second fight (of 2014) I went all aggressive with Johan Perez and still one judge had it a draw. And then I went aggressive on Benavidez. I felt like my body language was like a champion and I was going and defending my title. But if I have to change my style to make it to the history books of boxing, I guess that I will. Otherwise, I’m just going to be remembered by whoever remembers me now and then when that dies out, nobody’s going to remember me. I’m not going to be in the books as a champion. So if I really want that, I guess I may have to be more aggressive and work on power. But there’s just so much I can do if they’re gonna keep robbing me. The judges need to change their way of thinking too.”

Riverside, California’s Herrera doesn’t deserve the hand he was dealt in 2014. He’s an honest fighter and one of the good guys of the sport, someone who didn’t take the easy road to the big fights. Luckily, being with Golden Boy Promotions, he’s likely to be back in a big fight in 2015, and that gives “El Maestro” hope that if he does his job right, those judging his fights will follow suit. It’s a big if, but being a successful prizefighter means putting reality to the side time and again and being optimistic that your fists will take care of everything. And this year, he’s not looking for fringe belts or champions; he’s aiming straight for the top.

“I don’t even care about fighting Benavidez again,” Herrera said. “I think I proved myself with him. I would love to fight the biggest names out there. I want to fight guys the people want to see, even if it’s not for a title. In a perfect world, maybe (Lucas) Matthysse and Lamont (Peterson) would be nice, and I’ll take a rematch with Ruslan (Provodnikov). Basically the hardest guys out there.”

When he says this, it proves who Herrera is as a fighter. To him, it doesn’t mean nothing to win if you’re not beating the best. And maybe in 2015, when he beats those fighters he’ll actually get his hand raised.

“Drama’s the best story,” he said. “And I created a little buzz with the robberies, so maybe that will help me in 2015 to get my moment and do something great.”