Distractions are like title belts. If a fighter doesn’t collect them, it’s time for a different line of work.
Manny Pacquiao doesn’t need a day job. He wouldn’t have time for one. Too many distractions.
At least, there’s talk about them and how they could be more dangerous to Pacquiao than even Marco Antonio Barrera in Saturday night’s 130-pound rematch at Las Vegas’ Mandalay Bay.
Even if the talk is mere rumor, questions add up to distractions that are an affirmation of Pacquiao’s unique stardom. Nobody is quite like the Filipino, called “a national treasure” in his home country.
But a treasure chest can turn into Pandora’s box.
The intrigue is whether Pacquiao can deal with attention that threatens to set him up just as surely as a Barrera feint.
He has run and lost a political campaign. He has signed a contract for some kind of role in Filipino television. It sounds as if he runs the Philippines when he’s not running a basketball team he reportedly owns.
“I have a lot of things to do when I don’t have fights,” Pacquiao said last week during a conference call.
The lingering question is whether interests between opening bells have trespassed on training for Barrera, who says he will avenge his 2003 loss to Pacquiao.
Pacquiao looks as if he is ready. He was reported to be 132 pounds last week, although weight has never been a problem for Pacquiao, who trained in the Philippines.
But no scale provides a hint at what distractions might do. Pacquiao is at a level few fighters ever attain. It doesn’t look as if anybody can beat him. Anybody, that is, but himself.
“I’m still humble and still a simple man and, you know, the same as before,” he said. “There’s no changes.”
But questions and celebrity are inevitable byproducts of success. They create changes, which could be Pacquiao’s undoing if he doesn’t acknowledge them. Barrera’s big bother Meanwhile, Barrera had only praise last week for Pacquiao and only contempt for Pacquiao’s trainer, Freddie Roach, who said he wants to check the way Barrera’s hands are wrapped. Roach said the wraps under Barrera’s gloves are too thick.
“He’s not a good trainer,” Barrera said through an interpreter. “He shouldn’t be worried about me. He should be worried about Manny Pacquiao.”
Barrera went on to rip the respected Roach for his work as trainer for Oscar De La Hoya in a loss to Floyd Mayweather Jr.
“Look what he did to Oscar,” Barrera said. “He helped Oscar lose.” Pavlik’s payoff Kelly Pavlik’s victory in a seventh-round stoppage of Jermain Taylor Saturday night for the middleweight title was a testament to an old-school ethic lost in the rush to cash in on potential. Taylor, an Olympic bronze medalist, had the potential and some of the up-front cash to go with it.
For Pavlik, there were only dues. Since losing to Taylor in trials for the 2000 Sydney Games, Pavlik paid them in full. His payoff was earned with grit learned on a career path far from the one provided for Taylor.
Pavlik got up and resumed the fight after he was knocked down in the second. Taylor didn’t in the seventh. Pavlik learned to do what Taylor never had to.
