Any athlete needs to be focused on the task at hand, but a fighter perhaps more so than any other because of the obvious danger and because one punch can turn around a fight and send a superior fighter to defeat.
Manny Pacquiao said that one of the reasons he lost a decision to Erik Morales in their first fight in March 2005 was the distraction caused by a beef with his promoter at the time, Gary Shaw. That, and a cut Pacquiao suffered during the fight were, in his mind, why he lost.
Well, Pacquiao has more on his plate at the moment than he had then as he heads into his super featherweight fight Saturday against Mexico’s Jorge Solis in San Antonio, Texas.
Pacquiao’s new promoter, Bob Arum of Top Rank Inc., is embroiled in a legal battle with Oscar De La Hoya’s Golden Boy Promotions over the rights to Pacquiao. Both companies signed Pacquiao to contracts last year and Pacquiao has chosen to honor the contract with Arum.
Furthermore, Golden Boy tried to get an injunction to stop Pacquiao’s fight with Solis. But Golden Boy was shot down in state and federal court, meaning the pay-per-view event will go on as scheduled.
With all that, Pacquiao is without trainer Freddie Roach, who is in Puerto Rico training the aforementioned De La Hoya for his May 5 mega fight against Floyd Mayweather Jr. Topping it off, Pacquiao is running for Congress in his native Philippines. Other than all that, Pacquiao has no distractions at all.
“My focus right now is to train hard and to get in shape and to concentrate on the fight,” Pacquiao said. “That’s all. I never let distractions get in the way of my training. Never.
“I can do many things (at) one time.”
It seems Pacquiao forgot about the excuses he made after his loss to Morales, which he has since twice avenged in knockout fashion. But at the end of the day, he’s probably right. We don’t believe for one second that he lost to Morales because he was distracted. He lost to Morales because Morales was the better man that night.
But fighters take losing very personally because of the one-on-one nature of the sport, so they are the first ones to make excuses when they lose.
Besides, in Arum, Pacquiao has just the promoter who can keep much of what is going on away from him. Arum has been around a long time in this game. He is a master.
“None of this (litigation) has affected Manny because we’ve kept Manny out of it,” Arum said. “And, indeed, very little of it has affected me because I’ve been out of it. That is something that’s handled primarily by our lawyers. Our lawyers are the best in the country. They have done a fabulous job and the results demonstrate that.”
While Arum has separated Pacquiao from the legal fight with Golden Boy, Pacquiao said he has been able to steer clear of his political campaign while preparing for Solis.
“When I get here in America and I start training I just, you know, just train,” he said. “I am very focused on training for my coming fight. I have a lot of people in the Philippines working my campaign and know how to campaign for Manny Pacquiao while I’m away.”
As for the trainer issue, Pacquiao would appear to be in good hands with Justin Fortune, who is Roach’s second in command at his Wild Card Gym in Hollywood.
“Manny realizes the importance of this fight,” Fortune said. “He knows everyone is out to beat Manny Pacquiao. He’s taking it very, very seriously.”
As of last week, there was still a question as to whether Roach might take a couple of days away from Camp De La Hoya and travel to San Antonio to work Pacquiao’s corner Saturday. But, as Arum pointed out, De La Hoya letting Roach go train Pacquiao would be inconsistent with the recent actions of De La Hoya and Golden Boy.
“You have to understand that Freddie is with De La Hoya,” Arum said. “And De La Hoya for the last month has been doing his damnedest to stop this fight. And, Justin is a hell of a trainer.”
Pacquiao, 28, is 43-3-2 with 34 knockouts. Solis, 27, is 30-0-2 with 23 knockouts.
Pound for pound best?
Arum said that, in his mind, Pacquiao has now taken over the top spot in the pound-for-pound polls, one that has been subjectively held by Mayweather for some time.
“If you were paying $50, who would you want to see? Floyd Mayweather and his style or Manny Pacquiao and his style, which is aggressive, which is entertaining, or Floyd, who is a tremendous tactician?” Arum said. “And I don’t want to take anything away from Floyd, but I think the public has spoken on this that Manny is the more exciting, more entertaining fighter.
“He has his skills and Floyd has his skills, but I think 95 percent of the boxing fans would rather watch Manny than Floyd.”
Chavez Jr. stepping up
Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. is 30-0-1 with 23 knockouts, but any resemblance to his famous father is facial and not much more.
Chavez hasn’t fought anyone at all to speak of, so to say his record is deceiving is an understatement. But Arum said that following Chavez’s fight Saturday against Anthony Shuler on the undercard of Pacquiao-Solis, he is going to start putting the 21-year-old in with some tougher fighters.
The first thing that Arum reminded a reporter of is that Chavez Jr. had virtually no amateur career, thus the madness for bringing him along this slowly.
“We’re really stepping up his competition the last few fights, even though you might say, `Well, he’s still fighting journeymen,”‘ Arum said. “There will be a fight this year in June against a recognized guy – a world-rated fighter. And then we’re going to have a real surprise later in the year if he continues to progress.
“He’ll be fighting a real big-name guy. I don’t want to go into it now, but it’s going to be somebody that … it’s going to wow everybody.”
Schuler, 30, is from Indianapolis, Ind. He is 20-4-1 with 14 knockouts. But he has fought all but one of his fights in his home state, meaning he is part of the very weak midwest circuit. Many of Chavez’s opponents have been from that region.
Robert Morales can be reached at [email protected]
