Fonseca's epic in Madrid

MADRID, Spain (By Pablo Aguado, EFE).- Mexican bullfighter Isaac Fonseca, who cut off an ear, and the bull "Brigadier," a 667-kilo specimen fought in sixth place and awarded a lap of honor after being dragged out, redeemed a long and dense spectacle of nearly four tons of gentleness in Madrid, amid the rain and wind of a stormy afternoon.

When that red-faced bull came out, more than two hours had passed since the bullfight and the stands had already emptied of most of the audience, frozen with cold, soaked by the rain, and bored by the tedium caused by the fights of the previous bulls, five enormous "containers," averaging more than 620 kilos in weight, but with little real bravery.

Thus, seeing Pedraza's colossal sixth bull launched from the middle of the ring, where Fonseca wanted to show it off, was what bullfighting fans, and those not so keen, seemed to have been waiting for, to have something to remember from such an unpleasant event in every respect. After three entrances to the horse, which "Brigadier" collided with and pushed hard, it was the Mexican bullfighter's own team that was responsible for maintaining the euphoria in a necessarily brilliant third of banderillas, before their diminutive matador took the muleta to try to show off with the bull, which, also fortunately and exceptionally, showed nobility and brought down its charges.

Isaac Fonseca decisively opened the fight, inviting him from a distance and with both knees on the ground, to link five or six intense passes to which the "pavo" responded with good sound, just as in the rest of the series with the right hand that he was instrumenting, but in which, very bled in the varas, the red-haired bull was gradually losing gas.

Even so, and despite the fact that there was no connection on the left horn, the performance kept the spirits of the crowd high, which Fonseca further enlivened with a showy finish of assists, changes of hand and chest passes with the bull already on the same boards, where he ended up taking refuge after a previous puncture and where the Mexican still managed, with determination, to put the sword in on a second attempt.

The ear for Fonseca, justified, and the somewhat exaggerated lap of honor for the bull, were requested almost at the same time, in what was the happy ending to a thick afternoon in the ring and difficult to watch from the stands, between the cold and the rain of a black spring storm that broke out just after Román had made a lap of honor on his own after fighting the first bull. Jesús Enrique Colombo also saw a lap of honor with his first bull.