Sunday, November 14, 2010
See if you can follow the math with me on this one:
Friday a naturally small man who spent what many fighters would consider their prime fighting at 130 pounds weighed in at 144½ pounds to fight for a 154-pound title at a 150-pound catch weight.
Saturday night that same man showed up for work weighing only 148 pounds, but he thoroughly overwhelmed a natural welterweight who entered the ring fully hydrated at 165 pounds.
Get all that?
Manny Pacquiao, 4½ inches shorter, 17 pounds lighter and with 6 inches less reach than his opponent, didn’t merely overpower Antonio Margarito — he took him apart like a cheap watch. It wasn’t like watching a smaller man hit a bigger man — it was like watching Jerry hit Tom with a frying pan for 36 minutes, with regular rest breaks. If it wasn’t the most dominant performance I’ve ever seen in the ring, it’ll do until I remember which one was.
I do not make such declarations to demean Antonio Margarito, who was fighting for much more than a title Saturday night in Texas and who demonstrated as much heart as you could ever hope to see in a fighter. I make them to support the essential, inalienable truth that not only is Manny Pacquiao pound for pound the best fighter in the world today, he is the best on a par with Sugar Ray Robinson, about whom the phrase “pound for pound” was first popularized.
Never mind his three losses. Never mind his two draws. I have long believed that the true greatness of a fighter cannot be measured or understood until he has lost and fought his way back. And fight back Pacquiao has — with a vengeance — having now won titles in eight different weight divisions.
Meanwhile, Floyd Mayweather Jr. performs the most acrobatic verbal contortions to protect the unblemished record that he believes gives him claim to the pound-for-pound title, but the facts are these: He hasn’t fought Miguel Cotto, whom Pacquiao defeated at a 145-pound catch weight on a night when Cotto entered the ring over 160 pounds. He hasn’t fought Margarito (see above). He avoided Oscar De La Hoya until the Golden Boy was past his prime. He put off Shane Mosley until Mosley was 38.1 And he has done everything in his power to avoid fighting Pacquiao himself.
Come January, however, Mayweather might find himself headed to prison, the state of Nevada having saved him from ever facing Pacquiao.
I honestly expected Margarito–Pacquiao would be a much closer affair, having predicted a majority decision for Manny (meaning at least one judge would score the fight a draw). I was thinking not only of Margarito’s size advantage but of his reputation as a relentless action fighter.2
I needn’t have hedged my bet.
Round 2 was the only round I might have scored for Margarito. However, as HBO’s Jim Lampley noted, that’s the round during which Pacquiao seemed to learn something about his opponent: namely, how to stick that straight left hand through Margarito’s guard. Which he did repeatedly for the next several rounds.
By the end of Round 4, Margarito was already effectively blind in his right eye, which was enormously swollen, with a sizable gash beneath the swelling. Once, between later rounds, referee Laurence Cole came to the corner to ask Margarito how many fingers he was holding up. You can’t convince me that one of Antonio’s corner men didn’t surreptitiously tap him twice to elicit his answer: “Dos.” Later still, Cole interrupted a round to hold more fingers up in front of the swollen eye; that time had to be a lucky guess.
Having blinded an opponent so, a fighter will ordinarily continue to circle in the direction of that blind side. Not so Pacquiao, who just as often would move to his own right, creating openings whenever Margarito would open up to punch. Thus, by the time the fight entered the championship rounds, did Pacquiao begin to exact similar damage to Margarito’s left eye.
Were it any other fighter but Margarito, I’d have been astonished that an official, the referee, the ringside doctor, or the fighter’s own corner didn’t intervene to stop the fight and prevent their fighter from suffering a severe injury. In fact, Pacquiao himself seemed to wonder why Cole didn’t intercede to stop the fight at any time after the 10th round.
However: a) Margarito has one of the best chins in the middle classes; you’re not likely to knock him out. b) He never stopped giving his best effort, even when it was clear that he was not going to win the fight. c) He was a man fighting to redeem himself, and on some level, even the most conservative, by-the-book officials probably wanted to afford him the dignity of finishing the fight on his own terms.
That said, a more compelling option is: d) On some level, those same conservative, by-the-book officials might have reveled in Margarito’s comeuppance. Here, after all, was a man bearing the stigma of a dirty fighter being beaten with relentless abandon and surgical precision by a fighter whose hand wraps weren’t hardened with plaster.
In this instance, the punishment is commensurate with the crime. I believe Margarito deserves a second chance, and now that he’s had his ass duly handed to him, I hope he continues to make the most of the opportunity, fighting cleanly and providing us with more excitement in the ring in the years to come.
Will he eventually call out Pacquiao for a rematch? That remains to be seen. But I hope he does, because it would look very bad for Mayweather if Margarito — who has actually been pummeled by Pacquiao — volunteers to meet him again before Floyd deigns to climb down off his high horse to sign for a fight that should have happened two years ago.
Until that happens, the pound-for-pound conversation is over.
Pacquiao. Full stop.
1 In fairness, Mosley is in excellent physical condition, still trains as well as much younger fighters, and shows no signs of a letup yet.
2 After all, I once watched Margarito average 130 punches a round on a night when he nearly tore Sebastian Lujan’s ear off the side of his head — a grotesque display that now requires further consideration in light of the hand-wrapping scandal that exiled Margarito from the sport for over a year.
