Memo to Mayweather: If there is a next fight for you, be sure to throw yourself on your opponent's hardest punches. Do it several times. Commit ring hari-kari. Open up your veins and bleed if you can because that's what all these whining non-boxing people want to see. If you see Pacquiao's punches coming, don't slip it, don't feint, and above all, you must let him hit you. This is the average person's conception of boxing, not mine. If I were annointed king, I would pass a law requiring that anyone who comments on a boxing match must have spent at least three minutes of one round in the ring, not with the top talent, but with an unknown journeyman fighter. Try to get away from your opponent, to "run" as you call it. Then tell me what you think (if your brain still works).
I bought the fight for $100 bucks and don't feel ripped off . (I do wish the PPV ticket prices weren't so high, however) Now there is all this criticism of a "boring" fight because, after all the hype, the match went twelve rounds and there were no knockdowns. Plus, insulting to the gullible manipulated audience which was suckered into believing Pacquaio was the Messiah, Mayweather Jr. (the all-purpose smug privileged people's devil) didn't fall for Manny's b.s fighting style. Mayweather just did what the great fighters do--use all of their talents, adjust to situations, and whip up on your opponents.
I'll tell you what's boring. Sportwriters trying to capture eyeballs by doing what they usually do in Mayweather fights. Make Mayweather the bad guy, and put halos around the heads of his opponents, the latest one being Manny Pacquiao.
I'll tell you who's boring: Manny Pacquiao.
Pacquiao was boring with his "exciting" fighting style which involves jumping around the ring like a jack-in-the-box, a tactic that only works with people who think a jitterbugging boxer is a better one. To counter such a bald tactic, Mayweather kept positioning himself at the edge of the "circle of violence," moving in and out to crash Pacquiao's face with solid shots, mostly right hands, but later in the fight scoring some nice left hooks. Of course, none of this is supposed to happen when an orthodox fighter faces a southpaw--it's only a real ring general like Mayweather who can figure it out and deal with it.
Pacquaio was also boring with his immediate post-fight several times repeated claim that the won the fight. That was an embarrassing low point of which I haven't read a single account. Sportswriters apparently were having trouble extricating their heads from Freddie Roach's backside and didn't hear that.
Pacquiao is also boring with his claim of a shoulder injury on his right side. Let me tell you something. You can't be injured and not injured at the same time, but you can have hand problems, shoulder problems, rib problems, leg problems, as both Mayweather and Pacquiao both do. Pacquiao was throwing lots of jabs in his attempts to get in on Mayweather. A southpaw jabs with his right hand. Count the high number of jabs. Also consider that Pacquiao has two signature punches -- the straight left (with which he KOd Ricky Hatton), and the right hook(which worried me the most) which kept falling short because Mayweather was constantly shifting, giving him angles.
Fighters are always in one sort of pain or another. If the pain and injury is severe enough, you postpone the fight. Pacquiao checked "no" to the question about injuries and so did Mayweather (with his own problems not used as an excuse). They were ready to fight and wanted the fight to go forward. But who knew that Pacman was preparing an a priori excuse which most sportwriters and a gullible public would be only too happy to swallow? As Mayweather is quoted in this article, "Winners win, losers have excuses."
Now there is this ridiculous lawsuit.. You can't be injured and not injured at the same time, legally speaking. The plaintiffs allege that Pacquiao's camp (Bob Arum & others) defrauded them by having the fight go on while later claiming he was injured.
Of course, we know that Pacquiao (and Mayweather) are seeing doctors, physical therapists, kinestheticians, and exercise physiologists as a matter of routine. Pacquiao's doctors said he was okay to fight, ultimately. Pacquiao's people also say they had American Anti-Doping Agency permission to administer a supposedly non-steroidal medication in combination with other treatments. (Was it for this reason that the Mayweather camp was wary of artificial injections in previous fight discussions?) But the Nevada State Athletic Commission ruled Pacquiao's desired medication wasn't permitted under its licensing rules.
And so we have this peripatetic, all-asses-covered statement by Top Rank. It would be hilarious if it wasn't so pathetic. Truth to tell, Manny Pacquiao is a good fighter, a man I respect as a fighter. He just wasn't up to that top level that some people were fooled into thinking he was. Unfortunately, Pacquiao 's real life performance doesn't match up to the persona he's tried to project, nor the image the media has been complicit with Pacquiao in creating.
Can we at least do one thing? Remove the halo from Pacquiao's head and put the crown on Mayweather Jr. It's about time one of the topmost boxers of our era got his due.
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