Manny Pacquiao’s looking pretty much like a bowss right there on the cover of Time mag, the Asian edition. I’ll have more to say on his latest publicity blitz in half a minute.
Mainly I’m just happy that a few fights I’ve been writing about every week for months are getting unstuck to varying degrees, as mentioned in the headline. I’m kind of sick about writing about them maybe happening or maybe not. Those topics and others await in this vacation edition of Quick Jabs.
Quick Jabs
Ring has a good take on Pacquiao’s surge in crossover appeal, one that includes footage of his appearance on Jimmy Kimmel live, which I quite enjoyed despite not being a big fan of Kimmel. You know what I like most about all this? Pacquiao didn’t get so big for any other reason that he fought the best opponents and was exciting the whole time. Sure, his “story” — the near-deity status he maintains in the Philippines — is an appeal. But mainly, I think, it’s that he’s such a great a brave fighter. Speaking of…
Top Rank says they’ve had chats with the Dallas Cowboys about hosting a Pacquiao fight in March should he beat Miguel Cotto Nov. 14, hopefully Floyd Mayweather. You sure would need a stadium that big for it, although this wouldn’t be the first time Top Rank talked about some sports stadium hosting some big fight and it not happening. I don’t think most people really get how big a fight this Pacquiao-Mayweather would be. It’s why it HAS to happen. If Pacquiao doesn’t end up with Mayweather in March, I’m not sure whom he’d fight. Shane Mosley, his next most-attractive prospective opponent, is going to be busy in January, so I doubt he’d take that fight on two months notice…
A second boxer who’s been in the ring with both Pacquiao and Mayweather, after Amir Khan, seconds the notion that Pacquiao is faster. That man is Jose Luis Castillo, and the person who passed along the information, Pacquiao trainer Freddie Roach, is a tad biased. But I’ve long thought Pacquiao is at least as fast as Mayweather, a view not held by everyone. This is more anecdotal, admittedly compromised information…
The WBC, like all sanctioning organizations, is incapable of being satired. They do things so ridiculous that you couldn’t make up anything funnier. If you’ve been following the WBC convention, per the daily coverage over atFightnews, you know what I mean. They suspended Chris Arreola from their heavyweight rankings because he cursed after his last fight. Clearly, anyone who curses isn’t a good heavyweight anymore. They also said they would sanction a welterweight unification fight between Mosley and Andre Berto as long as Mosley publicly apologized for dropping the WBC belt to fight Antonio Margarito. Obviously, he doesn’t deserve to be “champion” unless he humiliates himself by kissing the WBC’s ring for what is a routine act in boxing — a fighter ditching his belt for a more lucrative fight. And the third act that’s questionable is banning fighters’ fathers from serving as their trainers. Apparently this, according to the WBC, is the factor that leads to more fighters’ deaths than any. I have my doubts it’s about that so much, but at least this one seems to be not an act of total egomania. (In other news from the convention, the winner of Chad Dawson-Glen Johnson II would have to fight the winner of Jean Pascal-Adrian Diaconu II, which shapes up as a good light heavy bout no matter the outcome; also, Andre Dirrell will be installed as the mandatory challenger to Carl Froch’s super middleweight belt, but Froch won’t have to defend until the end of the Super Six 168-pound tournament. Froch-Dirrell I was no barnburner, but it was plenty controversial and a rematch outside the context of the tournament is worthy, not that Froch and Dirrell might not meet as part of the tournament again later)…
The Arturo Gatti post-death mess continues. His widow has been awarded some cash in the ongoing fight over his his estate, but denied other things, like the dog. I find this all too ugly to spend much time on, candidly, but read about it above…
Larry Flynt loves two things: Taking pictures of women peeing, and Kid Chocolate. The Hustler boss’ chain of establishments will soon host a fight card featuring middleweight prospect Peter Quillin. Yay, boxing getting more sordid!…
So there was this spitting match between rival promoters Oscar De La Hoya and Bob Arum, over a blog entry where De La Hoya apparently said that Arum tried to engineer a smaller ring for Pacquiao-Cotto so that Pacquiao could win. Except Arum pointed out, and the Nevada commission agreed with him, that the rings are always the same size in their state. Now the De La Hoya blog entry makes no mention of that, but it isn’t corrected. How very odd…
I’d been wondering how Mike Tyson did in a turn behind the mic doing boxing analysis, and this review speaks well of his first try. Maybe this will convince one of the networks to give him a bigger platform. Maybe…
HBO might feature the Vitali Kitschko-Kevin Johnson heavyweight bout on Dec. 12. Not that I’m the biggest Klitschko fan, but I’m always interested in seeing top fighters fight, and Klitschko is definitely that.
Round And Round
It’s not final final, but Berto says he’s signed the contract for his Jan. 30 fight with Mosley, which would clear the way, I’d have to imagine, if it’s true. Good. This is a nice fight to help kick off 2010, between a fast veteran and a fast youngster, both of whom are offensive-minded most of the time and are probably going to produce fireworks. One downside: It might be on pay-per-view. In 2009, that fight doesn’t get on PPV. I hope that with the economy picking up, the thinking isn’t that there can be an uptick in PPVs, too. Boxing had done so well on this count of late.
Another very nice fight, Paul Williams-Sergio Martinez on Dec. 5, is finalized for Atlantic City. I’m not sure AC is the right locale, but it’s good for me because I intend to go up there the week of the bout. I’ll say it again, as one of the biggest Williams boosters out there: This is a dangerous fight that ought to give Williams some serious love for both taking it and winning it, if he does the latter. The only person who has beaten Williams is Carlos Quintana, a fast, tricky, counter-punching lefty, which is exactly what Martinez is — and Martinez is bigger and better than Quintana. The fight will be at middleweight, a point that doesn’t bother Martinez, so it probably shouldn’t bother us.
And Juan Diaz-Paulie Malignaggi II is a go for Dec. 12 in Chicago. The bout will be at 139; will be in a 20-foot ring; and will be in Chicago. I don’t think Diaz should have had to compromise on the first two, as the winner of the bout, but he’s right when he says that will eliminate the “excuses” from the Malignaggi camp if Malignaggi loses. The fight obviously needed to be outside Texas, and it’s not clear to me whether Diaz or Malignaggi will be the crowd favorite — Diaz has fought in Chicago before, and there has to be some kind of population of Mexican-American boxing fans in the city, but there’s a thriving Italian-American population in Chicago, too. Now, those people who thought Diaz was a pussy — they still think so?
Junior welterweight could get a little hotter still if HBO goes through with this tourney idea they’ve been considering, according to reporting that is more like “that’s the rumor” than anything much official. The four candidates are Devon Alexander, Marcos Maidana, Amir Khan and Victor Ortiz. It’s not as eye-popping as the deep Super Six tournament on Showtime, but any combination of those four men fighting gets me aroused. (Not like that, though.) Meanwhile, Alexander is saying he expects to do a stay-busy tune-up in December, because he hasn’t fought since winning his current alphabet title bet in August, and Don King is his promoter and chronically doesn’t get his fighters in the ring often enough.
Arreola’s going to be on the Dec. 5 Williams-Martinez undercard, and it looks more and more like it’ll be Derric Rossy or Brian Minto, which has Dominic Guinn popping off about this or that, as if Guinn is so much obviously a better choice.
With Israel Vazquez-Rafael Marquez IV talks halted — thankfully, I say — Vazquez is targeting Elio Rojas, who has the WBC featherweight belt. Vazquez likes the WBC belt, but if he waits around long enough, maybe Rojas will accidentally say “fiddlesticks” and the WBC will strip him of the title for using inappropriate language. Anyway, until he proves otherwise I’m guessing Vazquez loses to the first live body he fights next, and Rojas is that. Rojas is a titleholder, no matter how useless I consider that title, and he’s only fought once this year in the bout where he won the title. Those who think Don King is “back” might want to look at how he’s handled Rojas and Alexander at a time in their careers when they should be making more money than ever.
The ill-conceived Marco Antonio Barrera late-career run might continue with a match-up against lightweight beltholder Paulus Moses. Moses would beat Barrera easily, I suspect. Stop it, Barrera.
Since everyone cares about cruiserweight B.J. Flores, I thought I’d let you know that he’s disgruntled with Square Ring Promotions and expects to depart from the company, and would like to fight the winner Marco Huck-Ola Afolabi or Giacobbe Fragomeni-Zsolt Erdei. You’re welcome.
(Round And Round sources: Boxingtalk, BoxingScene, Twitter, Fight Hype, ESPN, news releases)
