Hello, all. We’ve got a busy week ahead here at The Queensberry Rules with pound-for-pound king Manny Pacquiao trying to take the junior welterweight championship away from Ricky Hatton Saturday night on HBO pay-per-view. One might say it’ll be a volcanic week, with the quantity of material to be spewed forth and with the subject matter at hand. There’s nothing I don’t like about this fight. It’s the two biggest fighters in the sport, two great action stars who match up well, Pacquiao going for a boxing history-record fourth lineal title, even great smack talk from their colorful trainers… I honestly could go on all day. Instead, I’ll break it up over six or so.
In approximate order, here’s what we’ll have on tap for the big build-up week:
- An interview with the producers of Fight Night Round 4, the highly-anticipated boxing video game that sounds mouthwatering. It’s got nothing to do with Pacquiao-Hatton; it just worked out the interview is scheduled to go down this week. If you’ve got some questions for the producers, let me know today or early tomorrow and I’ll ask ’em.
- Keys to the fight for Pacquiao-Hatton. For mega-fights like this, I usually break them into two posts, but we’ll see if I can’t condense it into one. Condensing isn’t my strong suit.
- A word on the undercard. For mega-fights like this, the undercard usually gets a separate preview. I’m expecting this one will just be a rant about how horrid this particular undercard is.
- Final preview and prediction.
- The Ultimate Guide. This is where I collect all the information you’d ever need — videos, my fight coverage, the best coverage of the fight elsewhere — into a series of links. (Great for beginners and experienced fight fans alike!)
- An open thread. I’m guessing even after all this, people are still going to want to talk about Pacquaio-Hatton, but all discussion topics are welcome.
- Maybe a Quick Jabs column if I can sneak it in, just to round up all the non-Pacquiao-Hatton news out there, because I doubt I’m going to have time to hit any such news midweek. Keep your eye on the Twitter feed to the right for periodic news links of note and related commentary.
- Coverage of the Showtime Friday night card.
- And it all culminates in a rare event here at The Queensberry Rules: A live blog. I hope you’ll join me Saturday night for the fight.
