A couple of weekends ago I made the weekend crawl over to one of the local Vietnamese restaurants in search of the world?s greatest hang-over cure.
That cure is called Pho.
It?s a Vietnamese soup that?s served boiling hot (it should be)with noodles, slices of meat, coupled with a side of bean sprouts and chilies. The next time you wake up feeling as though you ingested a pile of rancid double-cheeseburgers from McDonalds the night before, head over to your local Vietnamese joint and demand the biggest bowl of ?Pho? they have.
It is pronounced? ?Fu.? (Sorry for all you BC readers that don?t have access to the stuff)
As I greedily slurped down the ridiculously hot savory broth, I grabbed my glass of water and took a small sip. While at first it felt quite refreshing, a split second later I felt as though my molars were set to crack in half as the difference in temperature between the two liquids was virtually unbearable. The funny thing is that the water itself didn?t even contain any ice.
It was the temperature change that had my teeth screaming in agony but I could only imagine if the water had been filled to the brim with ice. I just might not be attending Marquez-Pacquiao II but rather stuck in a dentist office getting some of my pearly whites replaced with Tic Tacs.
While I?d like to end this piece with? ?End of Story, figure it out for yourself!?, I suppose I must progress with the correlation between ingesting hot soup, almost cracking my teeth in the process, and whether Juan Manuel Marquez out-boxed Manny Pacquiao over the course of their first bout.
The first round of their 2004 encounter was hot? no not hot, more like scorching, sizzling, scalding, blistering, and any other word you?d use to describe something that?s akin to going for a stroll on that big yellow thing in the sky most people refer to as the ?sun?. That round was as one-sided as you?ll see in any boxing event as the Filipino came out like an old-school mobster with tommy gun ablazing letting it rain with his fists.
Next came the second, third, fourth rounds and eventually the final bell.
Most spectators recall Marquez effectively neutralizing the ?Pacman?s? onslaught following the disaster that was their initial round by utilizing a lot of movement in addition to sporadically using effective counters. This was most definitely case in several rounds throughout the bout but… was it so clear cut from the third round until the final bell?
In reviewing Marquez-Pacquiao I over and over and over again, it?s not so clear that each round was effectively controlled by ?Dinamita?. The ?Pacman? had some very effective rounds in which he used his off-rhythm footwork to land solid punches while leaving Marquez with little or nothing to counter.
Perhaps it was the temperature of the soup that made the water seem ice cold.
Perhaps it was the dominance by Pacquiao in the first stanza that made Marquez seem more effective throughout the night then he actually was.
All I know is that to comment on the fight based on the initial perception without reviewing the tape is not intelligent from a gambling perspective or even simply a fight-picking viewpoint.
It?s similar to the Oscar De la Hoya-Felix Trinidad bout in which many observers felt as though the ?Golden Boy? clearly swept the first seven rounds. Watch the tape again and you can clearly make a case for ?Tito? having won one if not two of the first seven.
Don?t let the hot soup fool you Boxingconfidential readers? sometimes the water isn?t as cold as it seems.
PS. There?s no good ?Pho? to be found on the Las Vegas strip. You can drive a couple blocks off of it and you?ll find some generally authentic stuff. The Noodle Shop at Mandalay Bay serves horrible stuff? don?t waste your time. If you want a hangover cure I?d suggest just walking up to the bar and ordering a shot of ?Crown? with a Bud Lite first thing in the morning.
