Has any boxer had a better Best Week Ever in recent memory than Manny Pacquiao’s Best Week Ever? There was the meeting with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, then the meeting with President Obama. (They talked about basketball and reportedly the president said he’d buy the Shane Mosley pay-per-view AND root for Pacquiao). Then he was all over everywhere else, like a sit down interview for Pardon The Interruption and such.
When a boxer’s haircut is a major point of discussion, you know things have taken off to yet another stratosphere. (By the way, it’s not a Bieber, it’s a Bruce Lee, or maybe it’s a Beatles. Which makes it a bit cooler. Kind of.) And as if that wasn’t enough, Pacquiao totally pwned Floyd Mayweather simply by being a class act.
I’m not sure what he can do to top this. Next week, maybe, he’ll have a one-on-one with God, or at least a god, say, Zeus or Odin.
But other boxers exist, you know. And that’s whom we’ll talk about in the rest of this edition of Quick Jabs.
Quick Jabs
First up, some good pieces of journalism in recent weeks that I recommend reading. The Maxboxing team, as often as I disagree with them, produced good stuff on the health of boxers and the corrosive effect of ticket brokers. David P. Greisman experienced micro-local boxing for BoxingScene and came up with wonderful color and insight. Chris Mannix of Sports Illustrated took us inside Kelly Pavlik’s struggles with alcohol rehab for a gripping piece, including some remarks from the former middleweight champ that suggest, sadly, that he might not “get” it. And Sam Mellinger of the Kansas City Star has an even sadder but just as gripping piece on heavyweight Tommy Morrison and some of his delusions…
There’s been some back and forth between promoters Bob Arum and Lou DiBella over the Victor Ortiz-Andre Berto fight. My score: DiBella 0.75, Arum 0.25. Ortiz-Berto is a decent match-up between two oft-maligned semi-welterweight fighters and little more, but DiBella’s counters about Mosley and Mike Jones are even more accurate (although my recall is that Berto last turned down Jones when offered). Left out of this is the fact that Arum really clearly isn’t interested in matching his fighters outside of his stable, so it’s a verbal slap with no chance of follow-through…
Arum also is hurling invective at Golden Boy anew, which hurls some back but at least shows an interest in working with Arum that isn’t requited. If you’re not tired enough already of this feud, the Las Vegas Review-Journal covers it well here…
That Saul Alvarez and Matthew Hatton are fighting for the WBC’s junior middleweight belt is ridiculous, and all the more so given that there is credible testimony from Ryan Rhodes and Vanes Martirosyan that they weren’t offered the chance to compete for it, which would compound the WBC’s sin with lies. As for Golden Boy’s role in hyping said belt: It’s interesting. You’d like to think they would see value in the primacy of the Ring belt since they own the publication, but on the other hand you want separation between Golden Boy and The Ring, especially since the volume of questionable material published on RingTV’s website has mounted. So, I’m not sure where I stand on that one…
While I totally understand why lightweight champion Juan Manuel Marquez would not want his trainer to train Marcos Maidana, given the potential for a fight between the two, you’d like to think that Nacho Beristain might have covered that base prior to Maidana showing up to train with Beristain and being told, sorry, can’t help you…
Word is middleweight Roman Karmazin is retiring to be a coach, and if he is, he’s another one where I say, “Thanks for the memories.” His upset of Kassim Ouma, his savage knockout at the hands of Alex Bunema, and his gritty come-from-behind knockout of Dionisio Miranda were all, well, memorable…
Purse bid news that could/will have an interesting impact on the location of fights: 1. Luis Lazarte’s side won the purse bid with Ulises Solis, so the rematch of that controversial junior flyweight bout will once more head to Argentina rather than Solis’ Mexico, and you hope Solis gets a fair shake this time. 2. Golden Boy scooped up the light heavyweight rematch between champion Jean Pascal and Bernard Hopkins. While the fight reportedly is still expected to be in Quebec, since that’s where the money is, let’s not forget that Golden Boy and Hopkins threw an unholy fit about not fighting in Canada again…
I haven’t caught Mike Tyson’s interview on Real Sports, but the excerpts were pretty amazing. Tyson will never not be a fantastic interview, apparently. Also need to catch up with the Nonito Donaire/Victor Conte item…
There are a couple potential sticking points for the super middleweight tournament semi-final between Andre Ward and Arthur Abraham, but the one that intrigues me is that drug-testing question. In the past, I’ve not been an advocate of singling out fighters for a specific higher threshold of drug testing, but Ward, lest we forget, is one of the handful of boxers relying on Conte’s assistance. Forgive me for being skeptical of Conte given the absence of evidence that he is affiliated with ongoing nefarious PED practices, but this is one where I think additional drug testing would be a good thing…
Some boxing programming notes: 1. ESPN3 has picked up the middleweight bout between Felix Sturm and Ron Hearns on Saturday, starting at 3:30 p.m. ET. Better late than never. 2. Showtime Extreme is debuting a preview show this evening at 10 p.m. for the fight between junior middleweights Miguel Cotto and Ricardo Mayorga. Notice-wise, the announcement just came today, but better late than never. 3. Epix has indeed snagged the rights to air the heavyweight fight between Vitali Klitschko and Odlanier Solis. Not sure what to make of this one. Maybe I’d like it more if Epix was available via my cable or satellite provider, at least giving me the option of subscribing, or maybe I’d be like Eric Raskin and annoyed that I’m being asked to pay yet more to be a boxing fan…
Speaking of Mr. Raskin, he found a home for his weekly coverage over at The Sweet Science, making that even more of a must-read publication than before. How did I not know that junior featherweight Rico Ramos had his lip ring cut out of his damn mouth before his fight last weekend? Is this what I get for fast-forwarding on my DVR?
