Israel Vázquez Castañeda (December 25, 1977 – December 3, 2024)[1] was a Mexican professional boxer who competed from 1995 to 2010. He was a three-time super bantamweight world champion, having held the IBF title from 2004 to 2005; and the WBC, The Ring titles twice from 2005 to 2008. Vázquez is best known for his series of four fights against fellow Mexican Rafael Márquez.
In 1995, Vázquez made his professional debut in the bantamweight division at the age of 17. He stopped his first nine opponents before suffering a knock out loss himself. Fighting mainly in the U.S. and at junior featherweight, he beat 11 opponents, most notably Óscar Larios (20-0), before losing a split decision to Marcos Licona.

Vázquez scored 12 consecutive victories, and in 2002, he met Larios in a rematch for the interim WBC Super Bantamweight Title . This time, he was outboxed and stopped in the 12th round.

Vázquez rebounded with a stoppage of ex-world title holder Jorge Eliecer Julio and won the vacant IBF Junior Featherweight title against southpaw Jose Luis Valbuena in 2004.

In the first defence of his IBF title he knocked out undefeated Armenian Artyom Simonyan in the 5th round. In 2005, Vázquez opted to fight WBC champion Óscar Larios for a third time with the WBC belt on the line instead of defending his IBF belt. He won the rubber match by technical knockout in the third round — after the fight was stopped due to a large cut over Larios's left eye, thus becoming The Ring and Lineal Junior Featherweight champion and ending Lario's streak of nine consecutive title fight victories.[2]

On June 10, 2006, Vázquez defeated former champion Ivan Hernández (23-1-1). Vázquez defeated the WBO Bantamweight champion Jhonny González on September 16, 2006 in a bout where Vázquez was knocked down twice before coming back to win the match by 10th round TKO.