Archive for the ‘ Philippine Boxing ’ Category
I’m not out to change your opinion. If you scored each round and saw that Juan Manuel Marquez was the winner, I respect that. However, if you just “felt” that Marquez won, if you forgot to score the fight round per round, we need to talk.
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(Tihs appears in my gmanews.tv column)
Manny Pacquiao doesn’t need more accolades; however, this will not stop entities from showering the best pound-for-pound fighter with more entries for his already loaded résumé. Pacquiao, for the second time has been voted as ESPY’s Fighter of the Year.
Since its inception in 2007, only Pacquiao and Floyd Mayweather have won this award. This year Pacquiao was up against two other boxers and two MMA fighters.
Pacquiao didn’t have the best year of his career. He had a tremendous performance against Antonio Margarito but had a lackluster win over Shane Mosley, though the lackluster part was no fault of Pacquiao. When he last won the same award in 2007, it was because of three huge knockout wins over David Diaz, Oscar de la Hoya, and Ricky Hatton. This was, without a doubt, the best stretch of Pacquiao’s career.
The other contenders for the award were WBC light heavyweight champion Bernard Hopkins, former middleweight champion Sergio Martinez, UFC Welterweight champion Georges St.-Pierre, and UFC light heavyweight champion Jon Jones.
Now let’s break down the accomplishments of the other four competitors to see why Pacquiao won the award.
Hopkins’ last two fights were both against Jean Pascal. The first fight was ended in a draw and the second was a win for Hopkins which also put him in the record books as the oldest fighter to even win a championship.
Martinez defeated both Kelly Pavlik and Paul Williams in the past 12 months; the former by unanimous decision and the latter via a devastating knockout victory. Both were impressive wins and the second was even named as Ring Magazine’s Knockout of the Year.
St.-Pierre was his usual dominant self, defeating Josh Koscheck and Jake Shields. However, what hurt his chances of winning was that he failed to give exciting fights. He was dominant but he didn’t appear to be going in for the kill at any point in those fights.
Among all the contenders, only Jones fought three times in the past 12 months and he clearly had the most devastating results. He knocked out UFC veteran Vladimir Matsyushenko in a single round, submitted Ryan Bader via guillotine choke in round 2, then won the UFC light heavyweight title by dominating Mauricio “Shogun” Rua and stopping him in the third round.
Although cases may be made that the other fighters had better years than Pacquiao, the Pacman will be tough to beat when it comes to these awards. The UFC is slowly gaining a following, but boxing is still the bigger sport worldwide and Pacquiao is, quite simply, the most well-known fighter in the world today.
Pacquiao-Mosley may have been a dud but the fact is that Pacquiao is still the most visible fighter out there. The fight sold more than a million pay-per-views and received a lot of attention from mainstream media. What Hopkins did was impressive but people are not inclined to support a fighter as old as him and Martinez, as good as he is, is still a relative unknown outside boxing circles.
As long as Pacquiao keeps winning, accolades such as the ESPY Fighter of the Year award will continue to go his way. Pacquiao has built a huge fanbase and it will take a herculean effort for someone not named Floyd Mayweather to take this award from him. Even though the ESPY Fighter of the Year award should be judged solely on the performance of fighters in the past 12 months, fans who flock ESPN’s website to vote still take the fighters entire career into consideration.
I was underwhelmed by the four episodes of Showtime’s Fight Camp 360. I thought they would bring something new to the table but they ended up using many of the things that HBO did with 24/7 and they did it with much less drama.
However, I have to give it to Showtime. Making one more episode AFTER the fight is an insanely good idea.
Watch it before it gets taken down!
Watch them now before they get taken down!
One of my worries about the switch from HBO to Showtime was that the latter was not capable of creating drama through their weekly documentaries about the fight. I wrote about it on an article a few weeks ago.
The first episode came out this week and I have to say that there were no surprises. HBO 24/7 is indeed much better. Heck, even Manny Pacquiao himself did not know what the name of the program was. Anyway, for those who have not seen it yet, here is episode 1.
After I watched the first episodes HBO 24/7, I could not wait to see the fight. HBO 24/7 gave out a palpable sense of excitement. Maybe it was because of the poetic lines or the good narration or even the shots they chose. There was something there that got me excited for the fight.
This episode of Fight Camp 360 had none of that. The only good thing about it is that I saw my ugly mug at 7:23 of the second part 
.
Kidding aside, I hope the next ones will be better than this. The fans deserve better.
See for yourself.
Here he is before the fight.
Here is Montiel after the fight.
Damn.
Boxing referees often get it wrong. We’ll all seen how referees affect the outcome of the fights. We all saw how Joe Cortez award the title to a battered and bruised Francisco Lorenzo when after Humberto Soto’s punched grazed the back of Lorenzo’s head when while he was down. We all witnessed how Laurence Cole credit Marco Antonio Barrera with a knockdown against Manny Pacquiao when no punch was thrown.
Being a referee isn’t easy. There are a lot of things to be considered. You are so close to the action that sometimes things are more difficult to see.
In the fight between Nonito Donaire and Fernando Montiel, the referee got it perfectly.
After Donaire landed a check hook, Montiel crashed down the mat and started shaking. He tried to get up and failed. By the count of 8, Montiel was still down but he summoned whatever was left of his consciousness and willed himself to get up before Mora could reach the count of 10.
Some referees might have stopped the fight even if Montiel made it to his feet and it would have been perfectly okay. However, Mora knew what was up for grabs in this fight. Montiel is a warrior. He has proven time and again that he is one of the fiercest competitors in the sport. Mora decided to give Montiel the benefit of the doubt but after two more punches from Donaire, Mora wrapped his arms around Montiel to save him from more punishment.
I often write about referees who do terrible jobs. it is but fair for me to give props to one that called the fight perfectly.
Good job Russell Mora. I hope to see you working on more fights.
Yes, Sir!
Manny Pacquiao has made his way to MTV Cribs.
I used to watch this show a lot in my high-school days. I’d marvel at the lavish ways rich people decorate their homes. I’ve seen my share of rooms just for their shoes, flat screen TVs in the bathroom, rotating garage plates so you won’t have to turn your car, and of course game rooms with all sorts of arcade stuff in there.
The intro was priceless. “Hi I’m Manny PAH-kyaw. Come into my crib.” Slang!!!!!
There were a few quarters that were adamant about boycotting the fight between Manny Pacquiao and Shane Mosley because they felt it was a sham. One of the most vocal detractors of the fight was Yahoo! Sport’s Kevin Iole. (Check out this piece from Dennis Guillermo about the whole thing). Iole wrote that Bob Arum basically called Mosley as a shot fighter after his loss to Floyd Mayweather and his draw against Sergio Mora.
But now that Arum can make money off Mosley, he changed his mind about the American being a shot fighter. Iole called on boxing fans to boycott the fight but Pacquiao didn’t take it sitting down as he quickly threw a counter.
It appears that the boycott didn’t work. 16,000 tickets for Pacquiao-Mosley have been sold in the first three hours.
“Incredible. Simply incredible,” said Bob Arum when he heard the news today. “I have never promoted a fight that has sold so many tickets so quickly. Manny Pacquiao never ceases to amaze the world with his achievements. The excitement he generated today with the initial ticket sales makes it feel like fight week already!”
Add that to the fact that Showtime and CBS will be promoting the living shit out of this fight and we have a potential gold mine coming up. If Pacquiao-Mosley surpasses the 1.4 million views that Mayweather-Mosley had, Pacquiao will officially dislodge Mayweather as boxing’s cash cow.
I hope he does. And I hope Mayweather get so pissed about it that he’d want to face Pacquiao.
As most of you know, Pacquiao-Mosley in heading to Showtime. Bob Arum had a falling out with HBO because he felt he was disrespected when HBO chose to give a certain date to Sergio Martinez over Miguel Cotto.
I’m a big fan on HBO 24/7 docu series. I love how they sell the fight by making the fans feel connected to the two fighters. With the move to Showtime, it seems that Pacquiao-Margarito will be the last 24/7 for the Pacman.
Since their pioneer documentary series to promote the fight between Oscar de la Hoya and Floyd Mayweather Jr., HBO improved 24/7. They have made it an essential for big fights. It creates buzz and excitement. It riles you up for four weeks and it culminates on the day before the fight itself.
Even though Pacquiao has been on four 24/7′s (de la Hoya, Hatton, Cotto, and Margarito), I still feel that HBO can still make interesting documentaries about him.
Another sad part is that we will no longer hear Michael Buffer’s “Let’s get ready to rumble” line in Pacquiao’s fight. Buffer is connected to HBO and Showtime has its own ring announcer in Jimmy Lennon Jr. I have nothing against Lennon but a big fights just doesn’t feel like a big fight when it’s not Buffer on the mic.
I still don’t know what to expect from CBS and Showtime but I hope Arum made the right decision for Pacquiao. I wish that he didn’t do this for his personal gain alone.
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