And the new?heavyweight champion of the entire world?Manny Pacquiao!
I?m proclaiming Pacman as the Baddest Man on the Planet this fine June morning from my White (Gorilla) Harlem world HQs.
No, relax, Coach Freddie Roach has not gone insane like Crazy Eddie. Megamanny is not planning to inhale greasy doughnuts topped with thick, wavy gravy to eat his way from 140 to 200 plus pounds.
But I must hail Pacquiao as the world heavyweight champion for several pertinent reasons.
Let me enumerate:
1. Pacquiao is now inarguably the world?s best known and most popular boxer.
2. Ordinarily this status and prestige would belong to the heavyweight champion but, instead of a fearsome Sonny Liston or George Foreman or a dazzling light such as Muhammad Ali, we have Two Klitschkos, Bland and Blander or Wladimir and Vitali, atop the heavyweight roost.
3. The heavyweight division was the flagship, the mothership, the heartbeat of boxing. Now it?s a Brazilian favela, a slum, a shantytown populated by such who cares characters as the lumbering lummox Nikolai Valuev and worse.
4. We Americans are used to one of our own ruling the used to be glamor weight class. Now what have we got, roly-poly Chris Arreola, no pop Eddie Chambers and other impersonators who wind up going to Germany to lose to assorted Russians. They?ve put the glamor in the slammer. (Maybe tough kid Travis Kauffman, now 17-0, will emerge as a US hope. I hope so because his father-trainer, Marshall Kauffman, is a solid fight guy and a good egg.)
5. Hot on the heels of Da Pacman and trying so hard to get into the hard head of Manila Ice is former P4P ruler Floyd Mayweather. Glamour goes to glamour. Oh, and now Sugar Shane Mosley is nipping at his heels also. They’re all chasing the Big Dawg.
6. I could stop passerby of all ages and sexes, including those who are undecided as to gender, in Times Square this lunchtime and ask them, ?Who will win June 20, David Haye or Wladimir Klitschko?? Save for a possible Londoner, a German or a tourist from Kiev, I would get blank stares in response. Nobody knows, nobody cares.
7. There?s a social import to Pacquiao?s emergence on the world stage. His every victory is a victory for every man, woman and child born on or still residing on the 7,107 islands which comprise the Philippine archipelago.
8. Which reminds me, isn?t Archie Pelago a Hayemaker sparring partner?
9. I repeat about the heavyweights, nobody knows and nobody cares.
10. If it was not for apathy and disinterest, imagine the plight of the heavyweights circa 2009. At least they?ve got the old ennui to fall back on.
11. All heavyweight title bouts should be held in Indianapolis. Why, because it’s nickname is Naptown. We snooze, they lose.
Michael is a former sports columnist at the New York Post. He was a criminal defense attorney and worked for sports legends Howard Cosell and Don King. Marley also operates Boxingconfidential.com. Email him your thoughts. He makes it a practice to always recommend Pacland, Philboxing and feisty upstart Pacfanscorner.
