As expected, Manny Pacquiao would dispatch of Jorge Solis in eight rounds in front of over 14,700 partisans at the Alamodome in San Antonio, Texas, on Saturday night. Now, ‘the Pac Man’ embarks on a much tougher fight as he takes on incumbent Darlene Antonino-Custodio in his congressional bid back home in the Philippines.
Earlier, Edgar Sosa would outfight favorite Brian Viloria to take the WBC jr. flyweight belt and Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. continued his development by starching Anthony Shuler in two rounds.
But the biggest winners of the night were Cristian Mijares and the overall production put on by Top Rank. Mijares, who came into the night with the WBC super flyweight belt, but also as an unknown fighter to casual boxing fans, became 2007’s breakthrough fighter after thoroughly dominating the popular Jorge Arce over 12 rounds.
Anonymous, he no longer is.
From the very onset, the slick southpaw stylist riddled Arce with his boxing acumen and sharp combinations that cut and bloodied ‘Travieso’. Unlike Arce’s recent opposition, Mijares wasn’t old or moving up in weight. He’s a seasoned, yet young professional who is in his physical prime. At age 25, he’s already a decade into his career and after two big victories in Japan to secure his belt, he stamped himself as a blue-chipper with this most recent conquest.
“This was the biggest fight of my life,” he would say afterwards. “I have always wanted this fight. I beat a legend. He was a warrior tonight.”
Despite being left-handed and not much of a puncher – with only 11 stoppages in 36 outings, Mijares possesses a crowd-pleasing style. Cory Spinks he isn’t, and in the late rounds, loud chants of ‘Meee-haaa-reezz!!!’ could be heard.
“I think he’s a superb fighter,” said Bob Arum, who says he has promotional rights to Mijares. “He really shocked me, how good he is.” That’s not to mention Fernando Beltran, Arce’s manager, who challenged Mijares’ manager, Nacho Huizar, to a high-stakes bet at the final pre-fight press conference. “So we’ll be looking to use Mijares as soon as possible. I mean he’s a terrific fighter, a nice kid and I was shocked at the number of people that came from his part of Mexico. He had a lot of fans there.”
Also earning rave reviews was Top Rank’s overall presentation of the show, which featured all the bells and whistles promised by the company, which financed this event all by themselves. The card moved along quickly and seemed to entertain not only the fans watching at home but also inside the venue.
“I haven’t seen the telecast,” admitted Arum on Sunday afternoon, “but certainly the fans (at the Alamodome) were thrilled with the presentation.”
The reality is most other ‘promoters’ (and notice how that’s phrased) simply won’t put up their own money for the expenditure of such special effects. To them, just paying a bit more for skimpier dressed ring card girls from the local strip clubs is about the extent of what they’re willing to do. But hopefully this show has set a template for future pay-per-view events.
“That’s what I hope,” said Arum, who lauded Top Rank’s producer/director Rick Seara for his efforts in putting the show together. “I think that certainly with the innovations – the fast pace, we had music going all the time, including between rounds, a lot of pyrotechnics, great entrances with television cueing the entrances – we’ve got a start on something that’s great.
“Can it be better? Of course it can be done better. And hopefully it will be. But it was certainly better than any telecast, at least according to what I’m hearing, of any boxing event, ever.”
As for future tweaks they might consider, Arum says, “We gotta study the tape.”
PAC’S FUTURE?
So what’s next for Pacquiao inside the ring?
“There are four guys that are possibilities: one is obviously Juan Manuel Marquez. Then Barrera, Guzman and Soto – if Soto is successful against Bobby Pacquiao.”
Sounds good, but the problem is that outside of Soto (who is promoted by Top Rank), the rest are handled by ‘the Swiss Banker’ and Golden Boy Promotions. So you know what that means.
Pacquiao, this past weekend, was like an ace pitcher that didn’t have his usual command. But when it was all said and done, he could still rely on his fastball. And it was his high heat that he unleashed in the eighth inning after a cut-inducing clash of heads that halted the previously undefeated Solis.
“He was difficult to fight, I was not 100-percent with my performance tonight,” Pacquiao would admit. “I would say it was 80-percent of Manny Pacquiao. I was not at 100-percent because of his boxing style. He never hurt me with a punch. He hurt me with his head. The cut made me pressure him.”
His trainer, Freddie Roach, who flew in from Puerto Rico to work his corner would say: “Solis was resilient. Whenever you fight someone with a zero in the loss column, they are going to be tough because they don’t want to lose for the first time. Manny was fighting half speed until he got cut. After that, I told him to stop playing around. Whenever you see Manny laying on the ropes you can tell he isn’t taking the fight seriously. I could tell he didn’t feel this fight was a challenge, but Manny was in complete control of the fight.”
At the end (as Boston Red Sox fans would say) it was just Manny being Manny.
THE CURSE OF MARCIANO
They must have partied like it was 1999 in Brockton, Massachusetts as Ruslan Chagaev would upset Nicolai Valuev for the WBA heavyweight title this past Saturday in Stuttgart, Germany. And like Larry Holmes and Brian Nielsen before him, Valuev learned that getting to 49-0 like ‘the Rock’ may be an impossible task. There seems to be supernatural and spiritual forces at work here that no mere mortal can overcome.
But let’s make this clear – Chagaev clearly won this fight with a beautiful display of boxing and counterpunching that neutralized Valuev’s advantages in size and strength. By making Valuev consistently reset his feet and mixing up his punches to the body and head, he never let Valuev’s stature become that much of a hindrance.
David topped Goliath. And it showed once again that boxing is a game of skill, not just size.
No truth to the rumor that an embittered Valuev would utter, “Marciano couldn’t even see eye-to-eye with my jockstrap.”
BOXING AFTER ARCE’S LOSS?
So what happens to the July 28th edition of ‘Boxing After Dark’ on HBO that was to have featured Arce, in light of his loss?
“Well, if Arce’s still available, if he’s not banged up, we’re going to go with Arce again,” said Arum. “If not, maybe we put Mijares in. But we have that date for an Arce fight, win or lose.”
Arce was indeed pretty banged up by Mijares, but late July is about three-and-half-months away. But honestly, I wouldn’t mind seeing some sort of round-robin of bouts at 115 pounds featuring the likes of Martin Castillo and Jose Navarro, alongside the likes of Mijares and Arce.
FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS
All I want for Christmas is another full season of ‘Friday Night Lights’ on NBC. Simply put, this show is magnificent in every way. The fact that it’s centered around football is just an added bonus. ‘The Peacock’ already KO’d ‘Studio 60’, don’t kill me again. ‘Friday Night Lights’ is the bombiggidy (as the kids would say. They still say that, don’t they?)
If they give me another few seasons, I’ll start ‘raising the roof’ (the kids still do that, right?)
FINAL FLURRIES
I thought Joe Goossen was much too kind to Brian Viloria in the early rounds of their fight. Instead of giving Viloria the necessary sense of urgency (that he usually lacks) he allowed him to believe this fight was going on much better than it actually was….I’ll say this about Zab Judah, he always looks spectacular against C-level fighters, doesn’t he?….Just my opinion, I thought Cristobal Cruz edged Franciso Lorenzo on Telefutura….Well, the MSG Network has shown two entertaining scraps in 2007. That’s two more than HBO…..Yeah, so Diane Gonzalez may have Carl Lewis’d the American national anthem this past weekend, but so what? Didn’t she look an awful lot like Eva Longoria?…..Long live Jackie Roosevelt Robinson…..
