Brilliant Pacquiao’s Prime Is Being Squandered at BetLM

Brilliant Pacquiao’s Prime Is Being Squandered

The fans at the MGM Grand Gar­den Arena in Las Vegas poured boos down on the ring, express­ing a sen­ti­ment shared by many pay-per-view cus­tomers. Sugar Shane Mosley was run­ning from Manny Pac­quiao, mak­ing con­sumer dis­ap­point­ment and anger understandable.

So too was this emo­tion: sadness.

Sat­ur­day was another wasted night of Pacquiao’s prime, the com­pet­i­tive cir­cum­stances and raw pol­i­tics of box­ing rob­bing what could’ve been a night of great­ness tested.

Instead, we got another lop­sided deci­sion, Pac­quiao win­ning as an over­whelm­ing favorite against a 39-year-old oppo­nent who had no inten­tion of actu­ally fighting.

Mosley was once a great cham­pion and remains a like­able ambas­sador for the sport. He never stood a chance against Manny, though. That was some­thing pro­moter Bob Arum acknowl­edged at the out­set, only to real­ize he was so out of oppo­nents for the Fil­ipino that he had to make the fight anyway.

Mosley was the sec­ond of Pacquiao’s last three oppo­nents to enter the ring and not even attempt to win. Four­teen months ago Joshua Clottey cov­ered up for 12 rounds. Even after he was shut out on the score­card, Clottey lifted his arms in tri­umph and posed for pic­tures with his team. The goal was to sur­vive, not actually box.

Before you blame Clottey and Mosley, con­sider what hap­pened to the last sev­eral guys who decided to stand and trade with Manny:

Anto­nio Mar­gar­ito, pum­meled repeat­edly, bro­ken orbital bone, sent to hos­pi­tal, career in jeop­ardy. Miguel Cotto, pum­meled repeat­edly, TKO’d, sent to hos­pi­tal. Ricky Hat­ton, knocked out cold, sent to hos­pi­tal, hasn’t fought since. Oscar De La Hoya, pum­meled repeat­edly, TKO’d, sent to hos­pi­tal, hasn’t fought since. David Diaz, pum­meled repeat­edly, TKO’d, sent to hospital.

We could go on. Manny Pac­quiao hasn’t lost a fight in six years.

And he prob­a­bly isn’t los­ing one any­time soon, leav­ing fans stuck watch­ing an iconic fighter dom­i­nate infe­rior oppo­nents just for the sake of watch­ing said icon.

Sad­ness isn’t a new feel­ing in box­ing. It’s just usu­ally reserved for those hor­rific nights when an aging cham­pion is get­ting bat­tered by the sport’s inevitable, and swift, cir­cle of life. It’s sad to watch great­ness gone. It’s sad to fear the damage done.

This is com­pletely dif­fer­ent — sad­ness born from frus­tra­tion. It’s like watch­ing Michael Jor­dan play­ing minor league bas­ket­ball, cheat­ing every­one from years of thrilling moments and mem­o­ries on the basketball court.

Crit­ics of box­ing are always say­ing it needs charis­matic head­lin­ers. Well, what then is Manny Pac­quaio? He’s will­ing to fight excit­ing fights, test him­self against big­ger, stronger men. He smiles. He laughs. He’s smart. He has a real life as an elected politi­cian. He sings on late-night talk shows and per­forms fan con­certs after fights. There’s almost noth­ing like him in sports. And Sat­ur­day, Top Rank put on a great show around him, com­plete with a rare enter­tain­ing under­card fea­tur­ing the return of ex-champ Kelly Pavlik and a dra­matic 12th round, come-from-behind-TKO by Jorge Arce of Wil­fredo Vazquez, Jr.

Then the main event bombed, the cold real­ity of the era ruin­ing everything.

Arum talked about a poten­tial Novem­ber fight between Pac­quiao and Juan Manuel Mar­quez, who earned a draw with Pac­man in 2004 and lost a close deci­sion in 2008. Those bouts took place in the feath­er­weight or super feath­er­weight divi­sions, how­ever. That’s 20 pounds ago for Pac­quiao, who fought at 147 on Saturday.

Mar­quez is a war­rior, but he strug­gled to get to 142 pounds when he was out­classed by Floyd May­weather Jr. in 2009. It was Mayweather’s un-retirement fight and con­sid­ered a some­what safe one because Mar­quez was so small. If he’s too small for Floyd, then he’s of lit­tle threat to the 2011 ver­sion of Manny.

Mar­quez would also become the fourth recent Pac­quiao oppo­nent first “soft­ened up” by May­weather, join­ing De La Hoya, Hat­ton and Mosley.

The obvi­ous solu­tion is to get Pac­quiao and May­weather in the ring together and stage the rich­est fight in his­tory. Then do it again in a rematch. That seems less likely now than ever, though. May­weather hasn’t fought any­one in over 13 months and spent Sat­ur­day night, he claims, watch­ing a Lady Gaga con­cert on cable.

We should be in the mid­dle of an epic tril­ogy between these two — their styles seem­ingly per­fectly suited to chal­lenge each other. It’s rare when the two best pound-for-pound fight­ers of a decade are essen­tially the same weight. Yet money, pride, pol­i­tics, bad blood, alle­ga­tions of doped blood, slan­der suits, domes­tic vio­lence charges and all sorts of other non­sense stand in the way.

We’ve been through the Mayweather-Manny debate before. Right now, it isn’t get­ting solved. It may never.

So we get what we get and the crowd gets upset.

“What could I do if my oppo­nent doesn’t want to fight toe-to-toe? It’s not my fault,” Pac­quiao argued, and really no one was blam­ing him. “I’m happy, because I know I won the fight. But I said my first con­cern is the sat­is­fac­tion of the peo­ple. I want the peo­ple to be sat­is­fied with my per­for­mance and to leave happy.”

The Mosley fight should never have been made. Same with Clottey. And it’ll be the same with Marquez.

There is vir­tu­ally no one left for Pac­quiao to fight. He’ll still get big num­bers at the gate and on pay per view because he’s such an attrac­tion, such a tal­ent, but it increas­ingly feels like a waste of time. He’s stuck in B-grade bouts. You can’t shine a sneaker.

Zab Judah is another option, but he’s lost to Clottey, Cotto and Mayweather.

Tim­o­thy Bradley, the dynamic, unbeaten, 27-year-old Cal­i­forn­ian, is a poten­tial long-term chal­lenger to Pac­quiao. Is he ready to step up as soon as Novem­ber? He may have to be. For my money, it’s the most intriguing fight.

At least Bradley is a fresh face. At least he has a future. At least, we pre­sume, he’ll stand up and actu­ally try to win.

These days with Pac­quiao that’s all we can hope for; a sad indict­ment on a sport that is stalling when it should be soaring.

Other pop­u­lar sto­ries on Yahoo! Sports:
• Lak­ers’ reign ends in embar­rass­ment
• Bryce Harper is baseball’s next big thing
• Tony Romo fails in U.S. Open bid

Related Posts:

• Pac­quiao Has Pick of Oppo­nents After Victory
• Pacquiao’s Best, Even When Not at His Best
• Briggs Back­tracks on Bears Being Hurt by Con­tract Issues
• Mike Mot­tau Reflects Upon Being ‘lucky’ Enough to Sur­vive Eye Injury
• Pacquiao’s Most Piv­otal Moments

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