Boxing, always known for combinations, delivered one Saturday night that summed up the crazy state of game that is forever scarred mostly because of what it does to itself.
Manny Pacquiao’s split decision over Juan Manuel Marquez at Las Vegas’ Mandalay Bay was terrific theater. The roar from a standing ovation said the patrons loved what they had seen. There was some debate about who won. But there was no debate about the performance. Everybody got their money’s worth.
About 90 minutes later, however, the fight crowd did what it does best. It kicked a good thing into the gutter. Promoters, trainers and the usual collection of wannabes exchanged insults.
Marquez believed he had won. So, too, did many of the media, including The Arizona Republic, which scored it for Marquez, 114-113. But it was just a close fight. Arguments were reasonable. But it got ugly when Marquez manager Jamie Quintana and trainer Nacho Beristain said they had been robbed. The fight, they said, was “bad for boxing.”
Beristain went on to call the decision “a disgrace.” Apparently he didn’t hear the crowd.
It was at that point that Bob Arum, Pacquiao’s primary promoter, erupted and shouted a stream of expletives in another chapter to his feud with Beristain.
“Shut up,” Arum screamed. “Stop the (expletive). There’s nothing wrong with boxing.”
Arum screamed a lot more, especially at a suggestion that the judges were crooked.
Judges, he said, aren’t messing up the sport.
“You are with those comments,” he said to Beristain.
This time, only the postfight news conference sickened anybody after a fight in which Marquez dictated pace and Pacquiao scored the only knockdown. As is so often the case, Pacquiao’s trainer, Freddie Roach, a reasonable man in unreasonable business, made the most sense.
The fight, Roach said, “could have gone either way in my mind.”
It was Roach’s understated way of saying the fight should be a celebration, instead of another condemnation.
