Meal Ticket Manny Underwhelms vs. Marquez (and Floyd Mayweather enjoys a full night of sleep)

Meal Ticket Manny Underwhelms vs. Marquez (and Floyd Mayweather enjoys a full night of sleep)
Dave Patek – SEF President

I know that I am in the minority when it comes to Manny Pacquiao. I am not a huge, adoring fan – nor am I convinced he is the superhuman gale force that the media and Freddie Roach have convinced everyone that he is. He is a great fighter – and very exciting in big fights…and has a very impressive winning streak going against some upper B – level competition.

The major issue at hand is that his celebrity has surpassed his boxing ability.
As I watched the prep for this most recent fight against Juan Manuel Marquez, I was taken aback by the amount of mainstream coverage Manny was gaining. Press outlets that normally ignore boxing as a violent bullfighting inner-city pastime were lauding Manny with titles that many of them never knew existed (like ‘pound for pound champ’).

It’s ridiculous, but hey – if it brings fans into boxing…it’s all good here. However, with that much celebrity comes the inevitable title of CASH COW. With that bill comes more titles like ‘product endorser’, ‘screen star’…and in this case, President of the Philippines. The man literally has had more coverage during his reign than all of the previous pound for pound champs in history. The dude is hard to miss – and if you don’t know who he is, you’ve likely been living under a bridge for the past 5 years. No offense, just truth.

Manny’s celebrity status carried over into the ring Saturday night in a big way. While Marquez stayed true to his roots and entered the ring with a sombrero and traditional mariachi music, Manny (again, unfortunately) decided to walk the aisle to the theme to Rocky III – Survivor’s ‘Eye of the Tiger”…easily one of the most recognizable fight themes from any boxing movie (again, even the outer fringe of boxing fans get excited when hearing this song). And worse yet – he hired aging Survivor front man Jimi Jamison who sounded like the Swedish Chef gargling vinegar. Still – the crowd responded to the Rocky Reference, and most of the pre-fight momentum remained in Manny’s corner.

After a dozen national anthems and all of the pageantry that goes with a world-class prizefight, the bell rang…and a billion people across the world ran into the living room to watch the opening seconds of what turned out to be another great Saturday Evening of Fisticuffs.

As with all fights, I try my best to block out the announcers as much as possible – at least in the initial broadcast. It was much harder to do that with this fight considering the fact that all three announcers chose to put Manny on a pedestal of Grecian proportions. There was clearly some sort of creative ‘scripting’ involved with this one…

I’m not going into fight specifics – or round by round analysis…
But I will say that I believe Marquez deserved a win in this one. Yes, Marquez faded down the stretch, but Manny was far from a definitive ‘victor’ in any of the final three rounds. It drives me crazy that anyone can say with concrete certainty that Manny truly deserved a score of 116-113 from any judge. You can show me Compubox scores all day (I think Compubox is silly…look at the Alexander/Kotelnik fight for further proof) and I will laugh at you. Here is what I observed in no particular order:

- Manny was never able to get his punches off – especially his trademark left hand. He was limited to chopping hooks and jabs most of the night. When he tried to unload his power shots…they were parried, totally blocked – or Manny missed (most of the fight).

- Marquez laid out a perfect blueprint on beating Manny – and it’s no surprise to me. I have been saying all along that Manny has been fed a steady diet of brawlers (or in the case of Clottey, a totally defensive fighter). When he is fighting a guy with equal offensive and defensive skills, he’s looked bad. In this fight, he looked down right confounded.

- Almost all of the crowd pleasing shots were landed by Marquez – sans a few good shots by Manny.

- Yes, Marquez faded late…and I understand that ‘champions finish strong’ – but even if he lost rounds 10-12, I had it even at worse. He dominated the bulk of the fight. Dominated.

- The idea that Marquez would win a decision was a long shot. There is too much money on the line in too many places for Manny to lose. Had Manny lost, the idea of a fight next year with Mayweather is far less lucrative. To me, it’s already less lucrative. I’d rather see Floyd fight Tim Bradley at 147.

While I don’t think it was a robbery, I’m disappointed in the judging and the broadcasting of this one. My personal favorite comment came from Max Kellerman who said something like “people are going to judge this one based on the fact that Marquez is fighting better than they thought he would…rather than how he is actually fighting”. That might be the case, but to sit there for weeks and hype Manny as the second coming…then have to scramble back and step over all of those thoughts is disheartening.

So, while Manny is forced to fight Marquez for a FOURTH time...Floyd Mayweather will keep himself relevant and fight against a young (and hungry) Tim Bradley. After all, Mayweather has proven he’s better than Marquez – it’s taken Manny a trilogy (and beyond) to do that.