Tungod, Inabanga, Bohol – In a sport where quantity is, more often than not, given more credence than quality, seeing that unblemished records are irrationally brought to the table as major bargaining chips, one can’t help but wonder whether things are set into proper perspective or not. Here, we are going to dissect the few blots in the resume of Manny “Pacman” Pacquiao, arguably the planet’s supreme living pugilist, and put some sense into senseless and utterly pointless notions that are primarily geared at diminishing the Pinoy pride’s greatness. They can try, but they will never succeed. They can’t put a good man, much less a great man, down.
Let’s start our discussion with the chronologically latest – the loss to Erik “El Terrible” Morales in the first edition of their explosive trilogy. Prior to this encounter, veteran trainer Freddie Roach worked with his prizefighter to develop a wicked punch using the right hand that they called Manila Ice. Owing primarily to the nasty cut suffered by Pacquiao caused by an accidental headbutt in the 5th round of that bout, the supposedly savage right hook was, however, deemed ineffective and inefficient. Pacquiao was practically one-eyed from the fifth round onwards.
One might argue that Morales was dominating Pacquiao and that he kept the Pinoy firebomb backpedalling, which was construed then as a major chink in his armor – that Pacquiao couldn’t fight going backwards. The operative term there is “dominating”… but lo and behold, the judges scored the bout 115-113 across the board! Simply put, Morales just won two more rounds than Pacquiao did (7 rounds for Morales and 5 rounds for Pacquiao). I don’t know about you, but that would certainly not count as a dominating performance if you’d ask me.
Their 2nd encounter gave us a clear picture of what would have happened had Pacquiao avoided getting cut by a headbutt in their first faceoff. That bout started just as it did in the first one – with Morales getting the upper hand in the earlier rounds. It was a classic battle between man (Morales) and machine (Pacquiao). While Morales was slowly fading halfway through the fight, Pacquiao was relentless in his attack. If there is something that really sets Pacquiao apart from the rest of the boxing world, it is his ability to take a punch and dish out some more, which usually ends up with his opponent getting hurt while he unbelievably seems to be impervious to pain. The Marco Antonio Barerra (first bout),David Diaz and Miguel Angel Cotto showdowns, in one way or another, were concrete cases in point.
Now let’s go to perhaps one of the, if not the, most controversial and one might say highly contested fights to date – the draw with Juan Manuel Marquez. After getting knocked down three times in the first round, the gritty Mexican gallantly and methodically worked his way back into the fight to force a draw. Guy Jutras who was one of the judges scoring the fight even scored the bout 115-110 in favor of Marquez. This basically meant that in his eyes, Pacquiao only won one solitary round spanning the 2nd and 12th innings. Pacquiao’s critics and/or Marquez supporters, as expected would then feast on Jutras’ rather polemic assessment of the fight and would even go to certain depths like Marquez swept all the rounds except the first one. I can only shake my head in incredulity. These people probably watched too much of “Fernando Poe Jr.” type of films – pun intended. Quite apparently, their judgments were already clouded by the idea of Marquez getting up from those three knockdowns and still making a fight out of it. To them, Marquez was like a Cinderella in a 12-round fairy tale.
Looking back, had Burt Clements not forgotten his elementary mathematics, scoring the first round 10-6 instead of the ridiculous 10-7, there wouldn’t have been much controversy surrounding that fight. Would have Marquez and his cohorts had the guts to contest the decision? I believe not… or I could be so wrong and they could be so dim-witted. In the eyes of many, Pacquiao won that battle. Marquez himself conceded defeat by turning down a huge sum to do a rematch and instead took a measly $30K to defend his title in enemy territory, losing it in the process. Now that’s what you call poetic justice!
