Friday Night Fights came out of the gate strong with back to back fights that were both entertaining and competitive. Hot prospects Demetrius Andrade and Ruslan Provodnikov faced off against the Herrera brothers (Alberto and Mauricio) in what turned out to be very significant tests.
Demetrius Andrade passed his test, if not easily or in dramatic style. Alberto Herrera gave him all he could handle for eight tough rounds and he did not unravel. His power advantage was clear from the beginning and he was clearly the better outside boxer. Herrera gave him a very hard time by getting in his chest and forcing him to fight an ugly round of trench warfare in round two, but Andrade was able to get Herrera on the end of his southpaw jab and pull the trigger with the left hand through the fourth round. He kept it going through the fifth, but though he managed to look very good he didn't appear to be hurting Herrera anymore. Herrera rallied in round six and managed both to throw effective combinations on the inside and finish every exchange by throwing the last punch. In the seventh, Andrade managed to stifle Albert's success by showing that he could fight on the inside too. After holding off the last of Alberto's rally, he picked up his punch output in the eighth and final round to finish strong. Tim Cheatham scored the fight 79-73 for Andrade, while Robert Hoyle and Jerry Roth both favored him with shut-out scores of 80-72.
The fight was a lot closer than the scores. I had Andrade winning 78-75 off ESPN. Albert Herrera showed guts and fighter's instincts in toughing it out the distance. Andrade is clearly a fighter, I don't think we have to worry about him folding from a tough challenge. On the flipside, I think this fight took a lot of ammo away from people claiming he is being moved too slowly. Demetrius Andrade still hasn't developed a professional level defense and his punching technique needs a lot of refinement. The talent is clearly there, but he needs an experienced professional trainer. Otherwise he is destined to join Kelly Pavlik on the 'not quite good enough' pile.
On the plus side, he was really lucky Alberto Herrera isn't as good as his brother. Mauricio Herrera won a mild upset in the main event simply by coming to fight.
Provodnikov clearly came to fight too, but Herrera started fast while the Russian tried to stalk forward and throw bombs. Ruslan used his jab a lot more than Teddy Atlas would have had me believe and he was pretty effective when he did. Yet Provodnikov's body attack never materialized and he didn't set his power shots up well enough to make Mauricio respect him despite being the stronger man in round two and hurting Herrera in round three. Mauricio was even able to wobble Provodnikov himself in round six and looked to be slightly ahead as the second half of the fight began.
The second half of the fight was competitive down the line, following a clear rhythm. Provodnikov had some success targetting Herrera's right eye in the seventh and appeared to be the stronger man in the exchanges in round eight. In round ten, he walked Herrera down and Mauricio appeared to weaken over the course of the hard round. The championship rounds, however, saw no let-up in the action as Provodnikov scored with big right hands but Herrera appeared to be in constant rally mode and never gave up.
The official scores were 115-113 (Adelaide Byrd) and 116-112 on both Duane Ford and Richard Houck's cards, all for Mauricio Herrera. My own card was 116-112 for Provodnikov, whom I thought was the stronger fighter in the second half of the fight, but you won't see me call this one a robbery. Herrera fought hard, never gave up, and earned his win the hard way. Provodnikov made an ugly, swollen mess of his right eye and Mauricio kept slugging back with hard combinations and boxed just well enough to give himself the distance he needed to keep throwing everything he had.
Provodnikov may or may not have been handicapped by the black eye he took into the ring with him, sustained in sparring. The swelling didn't look bad enough to cause trouble in itself. It could be evidence of too much fighting in the gym making a fighter less effective in the ring. The ESPN broadcasters said Ruslan's camp's official report was that their fighter had suffered the black eye sparring with 'bigger men.' Every hardcore fan loves to hear stories of the Philly and Kronk gym wars of 'the good old days', but the human body only has so much of a threshold for punishment. Take too much and that's that.
Don't take any credit from Mauricio. Some once-beaten guys in his boat fold when they face a big puncher who won't stop coming forward. Alberto is clearly a lot tougher than his late start and lack of quality experience would indicate too.
Maybe ESPN should have the Herrera brothers back to headline a few cards. I'd say they both have the potential to be a lot more than just some other guy's opponent.
I'd love to see a Provodnikov-Herrera rematch. Not because I scored the fight differently from the judges. Just because it is my first official candidate for 2011's fight of the year.
Tuesday, January 11, 2011
Thursday, January 6, 2011
What no one is talking about: Scoring on a curve?
Before writing anything else, I want to note that I simply cannot spell the last name of the boxing fan who came up with this topic of discussion solely from hearing it pronounced 'on air.' That is the only reason I am not properly crediting the creative thought behind the topic. I can only apologize and direct everyone to please actually listen to the show.
I am regular listener of Ring Theory on RingTV.com. Every episode has one segment that everyone who follows boxing should listen to, period. It is called 'What no one is talking about.' Since most of us in the blogosphere have a tendency to talk about what everyone is talking about, it bears some attention.
On today's how that was the question of whether Bernard Hopkins is being graded on a curve relative to his age. This breaks down, in my opinion, into three key components. The latter two were discussed on air, the first was not.
I'm starting with what wasn't discussed because I can't believe it wasn't discussed on air. How do you avoid mentioning Bernard's age?
I think the question of age is deeply relevant to a discussion of how good Hopkins really is and where he belongs in boxing history. It's impossible to ignore. Very few prize-fighters have successfully managed to fight on a truly world-class level for as long as Bernard. If we were to judge all fighters successful longevity by Bernard's standards, that would constitute a curve no one could rise to meet. The man is a freak of fitness. Everyone is going to talk about how good he is 'at his age' for the simple reason that no one ever has been this good at his age before. George Foreman comes closest, but Foreman wasn't fighting Jermain Taylor, Antonio Tarver, Winky Wright, Joe Calzaghe, and Kelly Pavlik back to back and then fighting Pascal at 168 a few fights later? How do you avoid talking about his age when he does well?
The second component is whether fans or media score Hopkins' fights on a curve because of his age. Is he given the benefit of the doubt because he is doing what he is doing at his age or are his fights scored the way they are scored solely based on his performance?
This is complicated. I do think there might be a slight curve and I think age may genuinely be a factor because it is the excuse used to justify certain expressed expectations of boxing fans and experts: the expectation that the next guy he fights is somehow going to destroy him. There was a lot of this surrounding the Pavlik fight and nearly as much surrounding the Pascal fight. Both men were widely predicted by many fight fans to knock Hopkins out. In both cases, this most emphatically did not happen and (regardless of how you scored the Pascal fight) were themselves rather impressively physically beaten up by Hopkins. In both cases the predictions were grounded in a belief that Hopkins had finally 'gotten old' and had nothing left against a younger fighter at the top of their game.
When such resoundingly negative expectations are advanced by fans and experts as a whole then defiance of such expectations is bound to affect how such expectation defying performances are viewed. However, I'm not sure that this kind of a 'curve' is not justified. When someone is perceived as being unable to win and they instead take control of the fight and dominated quite a few rounds of same, is this not the kind of performance that is supposed to affect our perceptions?
The final question is whether the perception that Hopkins was jobbed by Pascal also based on a curve related to Hopkins' age rather than his performance alone? I can't speak for anyone but myself. Speaking for myself, I do think that my pre-existing views may have affected my scoring of Hopkins-Pascal. They just don't have anything to do with Hopkins' age.
I think one of the biggest problems of the scoring of fights today is that knockdowns are given too much credence in boxing. I am not saying that knockdowns are inconsiderable. I am simply advancing two theses:
1.) Not all knockdowns are equal.
2.) Unless it leads to tangible results of some other kind, a knockdown is just one more factor in the scoring of a round.
The first thesis is very simple. There is a difference between a flash knockdown where the combination of punching angles and balance causes one fighter to lose their footing and the effect of a genuinely skillful and/or powerful punch or combination of punches. There are also situational differences in knockdowns. In a closely fought round, the knockdown will decide which fighter wins the round and may justify a 10-8 round. In a round where one fighter scores a knockdown early in the round and then dominates thereafter, at least a 10-8 round (and maybe 10-7) is clearly justified. In a round where one fighter is clearly doing better than other and the guy otherwise getting outboxed and or outfought manages to score a knockdown, the knockdown requires us to score the round for the fighter who pulled it off but does not justify anything more than a 10-9 round. I think judges ignore both substantive and situational differences and treat all knockdowns equally, across the board, far too often. This is often evidence of hometown judging, substandard judging, or some combination of the two.
On to thesis two: some fans believe that a knockdown requires a 10-8 round under the ten point must system. It doesn't, it simply requires that the fighter being knocked down loses a point that round. Since no fighter can receive more than ten points, the guy who knock the other guy down has to win the round: one can't declare it even if the guy who was dropped was winning by a huge margin because he didn't have 11 points. He had ten. The rules also require that the winner of a round receive 10 points unless he somehow loses a point, so there can't be a '9-9' even round without a foul or a counter-knockdown.
It's understandable for fans not to fully grasp all of this, inexcusable for judges. Worse, some judges don't confine their mistake to just scoring one round 10-8 instead of 10-9. They mentally carry the knockdown into the next round and filter their perceptions of the current round through the previous round's knockdown.
The best possible examples I can give are the differences between three fights: Wlad Klitschko-Sam Peter and the duo of Adamek-Cunningham and Hopkins-Pascal. All three fights followed similar blueprints and yet were scored very differently.
Klitschko-Peter is my view of how such a fight should be scored. All three of the judges came up with scores of 114-111. I wasn't scoring fights back then. I didn't even have a blog in 2005. I'm pretty sure my score would have been close to the same as theirs, but whether or not I would have given Peter a 10-8 round is a very minor quibble. The right guy won and the score reflected the reality of the fight. One guy completely outboxed the other and the knockdowns were isolated incidents that didn't derail the process at all.
Adamek-Cunngingham was a bit different in a couple of ways. The first was that Adamek when Adamek buckled down and fought he clearly outpunched Cunningham and he had good moments in every round as a result. The second was that, unlike Wlad, Cunningham clearly transitioned his fight-plan due to Adamek's power. Early on he wanted to fight a lot more, but after being dropped the first time he changed tactics and was more of a pure boxer. The thing is that Adamek didn't want to buckle down and punch. He wanted to load up, land a right hand, and watch Cunningham get counted out. He did not appear to have the stamina or skill to hang with Cunningham for every minute of every round. I gave Adamek a total of four rounds: the three in which he scored knockdowns and round nine. Why did I give the other eight rounds to Cunningham? In five of them, Adamek just didn't do anything that justified giving him a round. In the other three (rounds ten, eleven, and twelve) Cunningham changed gears and just outright whupped on Adamek while Adamek stayed in the same gear he'd been in the whole fight. My score was 114-112 for Cunningham. The longer ago the fight gets, the more I think Cunningham was jobbed rather than seeing it as a close fight. Why? Well, to be honest, it wasn't really that close except for the knockdowns. There was only one 'swing round' that could go either way and I gave it to Adamek. The other eight rounds were all Cunningham.
The difference between Adamek-Cunningham and Hopkins-Pascal on my scorecard was one point each way*. I scored the fight 115-111 for Hopkins. Why? Pascal scored one less knockdown. I saw the first round as nearly even and would have a hard time scoring it if not for the knockdown. I thought the second round was just like the first, near even and very slightly Hopkins' round because of very slightly cleaner and more effective punching coupled with better ring-generalship. This is one of the three rounds I made judgment call in what I thought was a close situation. The second was in the third round, where I gave Pascal a two point round for a last moment knockdown in a round I was getting ready to give to Hopkins. I could not decide whether to give Pascal one point or two and I gave him two based on the fact that I had given Hopkins the benefit of the doubt in the previous round. I thought Hopkins won four and five by doing just enough more than Pascal, just a little more successfully.
Despite Pascal's two knockdowns, I only think the fight was 'close' for the first five rounds (at which point I had Pascal up by a point on the strength of the knockdowns) of action. In the sixth round Hopkins landed a punch that changed the fight: he visibly shook Pascal up with a right hand and Pascal's punch output immediately dropped and he started to respect Hopkins too much to successfully open up on him for the rest of the fight. Pascal didn't do enough to salvage his original lead or keep the fight close. I gave him the eighth round because he made a great rally just when I was looking for a round to give to him. When the chips were really down, Hopkins did things to win rounds and Pascal did not.
I've tried to break the latter two fights down to explain my thinking in both rather than to needless re-subject anyone to the original articles.
On a separate note, I think Hopkins was out of line complaining about the referee. The first knockdown was a legitimate punch that landed illegally because Hopkins moved in such a manner that he could only be hit in the back of the head. Most referees will call that a legal blow in most situations: some will go so far as to let a fighter (call him Frank Bruno, Nigel Benn, or Antonio Margarito) get away with repeated or deliberate rabbit punches because of his opponent's defensive posture. Later, when Pascal clearly threw a deliberate rabbit punch the referee correctly waved the knockdown off and allowed the action to continue. I thought Michael Griffin was as good a referee in this fight as anyone could be, certainly no Marlon Wright.
As I said in my original piece on the fight, I thought the American judge scored it close enough to right and that the French-Canadian judge at least had the decency to call it a draw instead of make up an extra point for Pascal someplace. I've seen worse 'hometown judging.' I specifically took issue with Daniel van de Wielle's scoring of the fight because he had no visible reason to be biased and a history of incompetence as both a referee and a judge. The closest I will come to defending him is that I know a lot of European professional judges tend to score points as if they were watching an amateur fight, ignoring body shots, but since I don't agree with that either I don't think it is a real defense.
*My original blog post says 115-110, this is due to a mathematical error I didn't catch the first time around. Going over my 'score card', I see I left a point off Pascal's side of the ledger. It's still a pretty big difference between my card and van de Wiele's.
I am regular listener of Ring Theory on RingTV.com. Every episode has one segment that everyone who follows boxing should listen to, period. It is called 'What no one is talking about.' Since most of us in the blogosphere have a tendency to talk about what everyone is talking about, it bears some attention.
On today's how that was the question of whether Bernard Hopkins is being graded on a curve relative to his age. This breaks down, in my opinion, into three key components. The latter two were discussed on air, the first was not.
I'm starting with what wasn't discussed because I can't believe it wasn't discussed on air. How do you avoid mentioning Bernard's age?
I think the question of age is deeply relevant to a discussion of how good Hopkins really is and where he belongs in boxing history. It's impossible to ignore. Very few prize-fighters have successfully managed to fight on a truly world-class level for as long as Bernard. If we were to judge all fighters successful longevity by Bernard's standards, that would constitute a curve no one could rise to meet. The man is a freak of fitness. Everyone is going to talk about how good he is 'at his age' for the simple reason that no one ever has been this good at his age before. George Foreman comes closest, but Foreman wasn't fighting Jermain Taylor, Antonio Tarver, Winky Wright, Joe Calzaghe, and Kelly Pavlik back to back and then fighting Pascal at 168 a few fights later? How do you avoid talking about his age when he does well?
The second component is whether fans or media score Hopkins' fights on a curve because of his age. Is he given the benefit of the doubt because he is doing what he is doing at his age or are his fights scored the way they are scored solely based on his performance?
This is complicated. I do think there might be a slight curve and I think age may genuinely be a factor because it is the excuse used to justify certain expressed expectations of boxing fans and experts: the expectation that the next guy he fights is somehow going to destroy him. There was a lot of this surrounding the Pavlik fight and nearly as much surrounding the Pascal fight. Both men were widely predicted by many fight fans to knock Hopkins out. In both cases, this most emphatically did not happen and (regardless of how you scored the Pascal fight) were themselves rather impressively physically beaten up by Hopkins. In both cases the predictions were grounded in a belief that Hopkins had finally 'gotten old' and had nothing left against a younger fighter at the top of their game.
When such resoundingly negative expectations are advanced by fans and experts as a whole then defiance of such expectations is bound to affect how such expectation defying performances are viewed. However, I'm not sure that this kind of a 'curve' is not justified. When someone is perceived as being unable to win and they instead take control of the fight and dominated quite a few rounds of same, is this not the kind of performance that is supposed to affect our perceptions?
The final question is whether the perception that Hopkins was jobbed by Pascal also based on a curve related to Hopkins' age rather than his performance alone? I can't speak for anyone but myself. Speaking for myself, I do think that my pre-existing views may have affected my scoring of Hopkins-Pascal. They just don't have anything to do with Hopkins' age.
I think one of the biggest problems of the scoring of fights today is that knockdowns are given too much credence in boxing. I am not saying that knockdowns are inconsiderable. I am simply advancing two theses:
1.) Not all knockdowns are equal.
2.) Unless it leads to tangible results of some other kind, a knockdown is just one more factor in the scoring of a round.
The first thesis is very simple. There is a difference between a flash knockdown where the combination of punching angles and balance causes one fighter to lose their footing and the effect of a genuinely skillful and/or powerful punch or combination of punches. There are also situational differences in knockdowns. In a closely fought round, the knockdown will decide which fighter wins the round and may justify a 10-8 round. In a round where one fighter scores a knockdown early in the round and then dominates thereafter, at least a 10-8 round (and maybe 10-7) is clearly justified. In a round where one fighter is clearly doing better than other and the guy otherwise getting outboxed and or outfought manages to score a knockdown, the knockdown requires us to score the round for the fighter who pulled it off but does not justify anything more than a 10-9 round. I think judges ignore both substantive and situational differences and treat all knockdowns equally, across the board, far too often. This is often evidence of hometown judging, substandard judging, or some combination of the two.
On to thesis two: some fans believe that a knockdown requires a 10-8 round under the ten point must system. It doesn't, it simply requires that the fighter being knocked down loses a point that round. Since no fighter can receive more than ten points, the guy who knock the other guy down has to win the round: one can't declare it even if the guy who was dropped was winning by a huge margin because he didn't have 11 points. He had ten. The rules also require that the winner of a round receive 10 points unless he somehow loses a point, so there can't be a '9-9' even round without a foul or a counter-knockdown.
It's understandable for fans not to fully grasp all of this, inexcusable for judges. Worse, some judges don't confine their mistake to just scoring one round 10-8 instead of 10-9. They mentally carry the knockdown into the next round and filter their perceptions of the current round through the previous round's knockdown.
The best possible examples I can give are the differences between three fights: Wlad Klitschko-Sam Peter and the duo of Adamek-Cunningham and Hopkins-Pascal. All three fights followed similar blueprints and yet were scored very differently.
Klitschko-Peter is my view of how such a fight should be scored. All three of the judges came up with scores of 114-111. I wasn't scoring fights back then. I didn't even have a blog in 2005. I'm pretty sure my score would have been close to the same as theirs, but whether or not I would have given Peter a 10-8 round is a very minor quibble. The right guy won and the score reflected the reality of the fight. One guy completely outboxed the other and the knockdowns were isolated incidents that didn't derail the process at all.
Adamek-Cunngingham was a bit different in a couple of ways. The first was that Adamek when Adamek buckled down and fought he clearly outpunched Cunningham and he had good moments in every round as a result. The second was that, unlike Wlad, Cunningham clearly transitioned his fight-plan due to Adamek's power. Early on he wanted to fight a lot more, but after being dropped the first time he changed tactics and was more of a pure boxer. The thing is that Adamek didn't want to buckle down and punch. He wanted to load up, land a right hand, and watch Cunningham get counted out. He did not appear to have the stamina or skill to hang with Cunningham for every minute of every round. I gave Adamek a total of four rounds: the three in which he scored knockdowns and round nine. Why did I give the other eight rounds to Cunningham? In five of them, Adamek just didn't do anything that justified giving him a round. In the other three (rounds ten, eleven, and twelve) Cunningham changed gears and just outright whupped on Adamek while Adamek stayed in the same gear he'd been in the whole fight. My score was 114-112 for Cunningham. The longer ago the fight gets, the more I think Cunningham was jobbed rather than seeing it as a close fight. Why? Well, to be honest, it wasn't really that close except for the knockdowns. There was only one 'swing round' that could go either way and I gave it to Adamek. The other eight rounds were all Cunningham.
The difference between Adamek-Cunningham and Hopkins-Pascal on my scorecard was one point each way*. I scored the fight 115-111 for Hopkins. Why? Pascal scored one less knockdown. I saw the first round as nearly even and would have a hard time scoring it if not for the knockdown. I thought the second round was just like the first, near even and very slightly Hopkins' round because of very slightly cleaner and more effective punching coupled with better ring-generalship. This is one of the three rounds I made judgment call in what I thought was a close situation. The second was in the third round, where I gave Pascal a two point round for a last moment knockdown in a round I was getting ready to give to Hopkins. I could not decide whether to give Pascal one point or two and I gave him two based on the fact that I had given Hopkins the benefit of the doubt in the previous round. I thought Hopkins won four and five by doing just enough more than Pascal, just a little more successfully.
Despite Pascal's two knockdowns, I only think the fight was 'close' for the first five rounds (at which point I had Pascal up by a point on the strength of the knockdowns) of action. In the sixth round Hopkins landed a punch that changed the fight: he visibly shook Pascal up with a right hand and Pascal's punch output immediately dropped and he started to respect Hopkins too much to successfully open up on him for the rest of the fight. Pascal didn't do enough to salvage his original lead or keep the fight close. I gave him the eighth round because he made a great rally just when I was looking for a round to give to him. When the chips were really down, Hopkins did things to win rounds and Pascal did not.
I've tried to break the latter two fights down to explain my thinking in both rather than to needless re-subject anyone to the original articles.
On a separate note, I think Hopkins was out of line complaining about the referee. The first knockdown was a legitimate punch that landed illegally because Hopkins moved in such a manner that he could only be hit in the back of the head. Most referees will call that a legal blow in most situations: some will go so far as to let a fighter (call him Frank Bruno, Nigel Benn, or Antonio Margarito) get away with repeated or deliberate rabbit punches because of his opponent's defensive posture. Later, when Pascal clearly threw a deliberate rabbit punch the referee correctly waved the knockdown off and allowed the action to continue. I thought Michael Griffin was as good a referee in this fight as anyone could be, certainly no Marlon Wright.
As I said in my original piece on the fight, I thought the American judge scored it close enough to right and that the French-Canadian judge at least had the decency to call it a draw instead of make up an extra point for Pascal someplace. I've seen worse 'hometown judging.' I specifically took issue with Daniel van de Wielle's scoring of the fight because he had no visible reason to be biased and a history of incompetence as both a referee and a judge. The closest I will come to defending him is that I know a lot of European professional judges tend to score points as if they were watching an amateur fight, ignoring body shots, but since I don't agree with that either I don't think it is a real defense.
*My original blog post says 115-110, this is due to a mathematical error I didn't catch the first time around. Going over my 'score card', I see I left a point off Pascal's side of the ledger. It's still a pretty big difference between my card and van de Wiele's.
Tuesday, January 4, 2011
Why Mayweather and Pacquiao will probably never fight:
A lot of boxing writers are still saying that Mayweather and Pacquiao are all but guaranteed to fight one another. The money they believe will be stuffed inside the mattress at the end of the fight is just too big for Mayweather and Pacquiao to ignore for longer than a year or two. The argument is a good one but only valid if the huge flood of money is really there.
First, let's be totally honest about the degree to which these guys need each other. A lot of people, especially among Mayweather's fans, will say this is out of left field but Manny simply doesn't need Floyd for any reason but the money and his legacy. The unpleasant fact here is that Pacquiao could retire today and his legacy would be secure. Even before moving up in weight to win notoriety as the 'best fighter in the world, pound for pound', Pacquiao won titles at 112 and 122 lbs. Then he all but cleaned out the 130lb division in dramatic fashion with only a single draw (Juan Manuel Marquez, followed by a split decision win in the rematch) and a single loss (Erik Morales, twice avenged by KO) against his record. In doing so he gained near undisputed recognition as 130lb champ. There was a day when most fighters Manny's size and age would have retired after the split decision win over Juan Manuel Marquez. Then, against Ricky Hatton, he won the undisputed championship of the world at 140lbs. Two undisputed championships and a plethora of alphabet titles won in big fights are a pretty convincing legacy. If the biggest consideration was firming up that legacy before retirement then Juan Manuel Marquez would do so more than Floyd. The draw and win with JMM were both controversial. It has been all but explicitly stated that JMM would drop in his tracks before he got a fight if he tried to hold his breath.
So, legacy-wise, Pacquiao doesn't need Mayweather anywhere near as much as we want him to need Mayweather. Mayweather might need Pacquiao pretty badly but he (and others, such Yahoo's boxing man Kevin Iole) doesn't think so. Mayweather felt he'd proven he was better than Pacquiao when he beat Marquez and a lot of writers gave him credit for his defeat of Shane Mosley that someone reading the discussion of Pacquiao-Mosley might consider past his due. History shows us that if Mayweather is convinced he is the best then he does not care on whit for what the rest of us think. So Mayweather probably doesn't feel he needs Pacquiao at all either.
That brings us back to the money.
Pacquiao doesn't need the money from a fight with Mayweather at all. No, you didn't read that wrong. It is simply the truth. Pacquiao is an A-side attraction who can fill Texas Stadium fighting the likes of Josh Clottey. All he needs is a one-to-two year diet of B-sides just as good as Antonio Margarito and no better. It's arguable that his share of the purse for his upcoming fight with Shane Mosley and his past purses for Ricky Hatton and Antonio Margarito were in the same league was what he'd be looking at for a fight with Mayweather. Which means that, if money is the only reason to make the fight, he really has no reason to fight Mayweather at all. One can make the argument, Mayweather being Mayweather, that unless something fundamentally changes inside Mayweather's brain that purse could be smaller. Can anyone see Floyd settling for less than 'his rightful share' of the purse?
The core argument for the fight is that the tv money will be so much better that it can't not happen... but Manny Pacquiao has been fighting exclusively on PPV for awhile now and has proven his drawing power even when the B-side had zero. What was the last Mayweather fight that pulled down big PPV numbers because of Floyd's name and only Floyd's name. It's very possible that we're seriously overestimating the amount of money he adds to either the live or PPV gate. Maybe Bob Arum agrees and this is the big reason for his willingness to flout fan desires on this subject: he doesn't think the money and splitting the empty mattress with Golden Boy justifies the expense of the promotion when he can keep the empty mattress every time Manny fights another guy in Arum's stable.
So how badly does Mayweather need the money? Does he need it enough to make Manny Pacquiao the kind of offer he can't refuse?
Ultimately the numbers suggest that the fight happens, if it happens, because Mayweather really needs the money and does whatever it takes to land the fight. That's not one hundred percent impossible but it ain't likely. Mayweather's ego and self-image weigh heavily against him doing so. He's always taken the path of least resistance in the past, up-to-and-including his decisions to fight Juan Manueal Marquez and Shane Mosley instead of Pacquiao. There has been some speculation that Mayweather is waiting for the moment when Pacquiao is the path of least resistance. The trouble with that is that Mayweather is a year older than Pacquiao and the reflexes on which he relies go away before punching power.
For those who have raised this Leonard-Hagler parallel, Leonard was two years younger than Hagler and controversial scoring was more of a factor than the dissipation of Hagler's talents. Don't forget how razor thin the margin of victory was in that fight. Don't forget how Leonard's own abilities tanked after it.
Don't forget that it still would not have happened if Marvelous Marvin Hagler had not been willing to concede every disputed point in the fight contract to Leonard. Manny no longer has any reason to do so. Does Floyd?
Mayweather-Pacquiao is the most important fight of the first couple years of the new decade. It's a shame that it won't happen. Floyd was probably to blame for the first failure and Bob Arum was probably to blame for the second. The fact that the fight won't happen at all now is equally Manny's fault and Arum's. The only person who can make it happen is Floyd.
If he gets out of legal trouble and stays out of jail. Let's not forget that.
There are no big fights on HBO or Showtime until the end of the month but there will be fights on ESPN on the 7th, 14th, and 28th. I'll be watching and scoring them all. During the same span there is one international fight (Beibut Shumenov vs Jurgen Braehmer)that I will watch and score if I can find it on the internet during or after the fact. There is a second international card (headlined by Sebastian Sylvester and Steve Cunningham against European ham-and-eggers) I will watch if I my fannish devotion to Cunningham overpowers my disinterest in the no-hopers fighting the headliners.
So keep reading even if Bradley-Alexander isn't until the last Saturday of the month. There will be something here every week, at least.
First, let's be totally honest about the degree to which these guys need each other. A lot of people, especially among Mayweather's fans, will say this is out of left field but Manny simply doesn't need Floyd for any reason but the money and his legacy. The unpleasant fact here is that Pacquiao could retire today and his legacy would be secure. Even before moving up in weight to win notoriety as the 'best fighter in the world, pound for pound', Pacquiao won titles at 112 and 122 lbs. Then he all but cleaned out the 130lb division in dramatic fashion with only a single draw (Juan Manuel Marquez, followed by a split decision win in the rematch) and a single loss (Erik Morales, twice avenged by KO) against his record. In doing so he gained near undisputed recognition as 130lb champ. There was a day when most fighters Manny's size and age would have retired after the split decision win over Juan Manuel Marquez. Then, against Ricky Hatton, he won the undisputed championship of the world at 140lbs. Two undisputed championships and a plethora of alphabet titles won in big fights are a pretty convincing legacy. If the biggest consideration was firming up that legacy before retirement then Juan Manuel Marquez would do so more than Floyd. The draw and win with JMM were both controversial. It has been all but explicitly stated that JMM would drop in his tracks before he got a fight if he tried to hold his breath.
So, legacy-wise, Pacquiao doesn't need Mayweather anywhere near as much as we want him to need Mayweather. Mayweather might need Pacquiao pretty badly but he (and others, such Yahoo's boxing man Kevin Iole) doesn't think so. Mayweather felt he'd proven he was better than Pacquiao when he beat Marquez and a lot of writers gave him credit for his defeat of Shane Mosley that someone reading the discussion of Pacquiao-Mosley might consider past his due. History shows us that if Mayweather is convinced he is the best then he does not care on whit for what the rest of us think. So Mayweather probably doesn't feel he needs Pacquiao at all either.
That brings us back to the money.
Pacquiao doesn't need the money from a fight with Mayweather at all. No, you didn't read that wrong. It is simply the truth. Pacquiao is an A-side attraction who can fill Texas Stadium fighting the likes of Josh Clottey. All he needs is a one-to-two year diet of B-sides just as good as Antonio Margarito and no better. It's arguable that his share of the purse for his upcoming fight with Shane Mosley and his past purses for Ricky Hatton and Antonio Margarito were in the same league was what he'd be looking at for a fight with Mayweather. Which means that, if money is the only reason to make the fight, he really has no reason to fight Mayweather at all. One can make the argument, Mayweather being Mayweather, that unless something fundamentally changes inside Mayweather's brain that purse could be smaller. Can anyone see Floyd settling for less than 'his rightful share' of the purse?
The core argument for the fight is that the tv money will be so much better that it can't not happen... but Manny Pacquiao has been fighting exclusively on PPV for awhile now and has proven his drawing power even when the B-side had zero. What was the last Mayweather fight that pulled down big PPV numbers because of Floyd's name and only Floyd's name. It's very possible that we're seriously overestimating the amount of money he adds to either the live or PPV gate. Maybe Bob Arum agrees and this is the big reason for his willingness to flout fan desires on this subject: he doesn't think the money and splitting the empty mattress with Golden Boy justifies the expense of the promotion when he can keep the empty mattress every time Manny fights another guy in Arum's stable.
So how badly does Mayweather need the money? Does he need it enough to make Manny Pacquiao the kind of offer he can't refuse?
Ultimately the numbers suggest that the fight happens, if it happens, because Mayweather really needs the money and does whatever it takes to land the fight. That's not one hundred percent impossible but it ain't likely. Mayweather's ego and self-image weigh heavily against him doing so. He's always taken the path of least resistance in the past, up-to-and-including his decisions to fight Juan Manueal Marquez and Shane Mosley instead of Pacquiao. There has been some speculation that Mayweather is waiting for the moment when Pacquiao is the path of least resistance. The trouble with that is that Mayweather is a year older than Pacquiao and the reflexes on which he relies go away before punching power.
For those who have raised this Leonard-Hagler parallel, Leonard was two years younger than Hagler and controversial scoring was more of a factor than the dissipation of Hagler's talents. Don't forget how razor thin the margin of victory was in that fight. Don't forget how Leonard's own abilities tanked after it.
Don't forget that it still would not have happened if Marvelous Marvin Hagler had not been willing to concede every disputed point in the fight contract to Leonard. Manny no longer has any reason to do so. Does Floyd?
Mayweather-Pacquiao is the most important fight of the first couple years of the new decade. It's a shame that it won't happen. Floyd was probably to blame for the first failure and Bob Arum was probably to blame for the second. The fact that the fight won't happen at all now is equally Manny's fault and Arum's. The only person who can make it happen is Floyd.
If he gets out of legal trouble and stays out of jail. Let's not forget that.
There are no big fights on HBO or Showtime until the end of the month but there will be fights on ESPN on the 7th, 14th, and 28th. I'll be watching and scoring them all. During the same span there is one international fight (Beibut Shumenov vs Jurgen Braehmer)that I will watch and score if I can find it on the internet during or after the fact. There is a second international card (headlined by Sebastian Sylvester and Steve Cunningham against European ham-and-eggers) I will watch if I my fannish devotion to Cunningham overpowers my disinterest in the no-hopers fighting the headliners.
So keep reading even if Bradley-Alexander isn't until the last Saturday of the month. There will be something here every week, at least.
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