Set in front of over 50,000 spectators at the new state of the art Cowboys Stadium in Dallas, the welterweight contest between Manny Pacquiao and Joshua Clottey was called The Event, but the battle fell far short of its lofty billing.
Don’t blame the Filipino marvel for the lack of fireworks though.
Pacquiao did his thing, darting in and out, throwing lightning fast punches in bunches, and gradually upping the intensity as the bout wore on. But, it takes two agreeable partners to make for a good scrap, and Clottey just didn’t take the kind of chances required to give the fight some desperately needed life.
What was so frustrating to the neutral observer hoping to see a good scrap was that Clottey had success when he let his hands go. He was accurate, landing some decent uppercuts, some nice right hands, and when he did go to the body, he often found the mark.
These little bursts of action were far too infrequent to make any kind of dent in the scoring however, and as the rounds went by, the Ghanaian dropped farther and farther behind on the cards.
Towards the end, the situation had clearly become more desperate, but Clottey just waited… and waited… and waited some more, his gloves remaining almost permanently affixed in his shell like defense, strangely seeming content to go the distance with his speedy rival rather than trying to throw leather with the kind of reckless abandon the situation begged for.
Perhaps the images of a battered and bleeding Miguel Cotto, an unconscious Ricky Hatton, and a dejected Oscar De La Hoya were burnt too deep in his mind. Clottey managed to avoid a similar type of physical beating to those previous Pacquiao victims, but the way he lost was arguably as emphatic.
It might be unfair to come down too hard on Clottey for his lack of output, as the kind of vigour he needed tonight has never been part of his game and probably is just not wired into his fighting psyche. A great prizefighter needs more than craft to reach the pinnacle of the sport; he needs that little bit of extra internal fire to drive his hands to constantly move.
In the face of Pacquiao’s rapid fire combination punching, perhaps Clottey was destined to retreat deeper into his shell. He is who is… a skilled defender, but limited offensively, and likely always going to come up a distant second best when matched with a fighter of Pacquiao’s ability.
The final scores were 120-108, 119-109 and 119-109 and were a fair evaluation of the difference in class on display.
As for the other three bouts on the show, the less said about those the better, as despite the main-event’s lack of drama, the undercard was even more forgettable in terms of excitement.
