Now Pacquiao Must Fight Marquez

Juan Manuel Marquez’s annihilation of Joel Casamayor Saturday sends a strongly worded challenge to Manny Pacquiao, a challenge Pacquiao must accept if the Pacman intends to truly carve out a place for himself among the greatest fighters in the history of boxing.

In bulking up to lightweight, Pacquiao chose to fight David Diaz, considered as the weakest of the lightweight champions. Marquez, on the other hand, fought Casamayor, considered the linear champion of the division.

And as everybody knows, too, Marquez bulked up to lightweight to chase after Pacquiao who abandoned the 130-pound division after squeezing past Marquez last March.

Pacquiao-Marquez II, billed “Unfinished Business,” was a fight that could have gone either way with neither fighter dominating the other. And, if anything, boxing is a sport that is in essence about beating the other guy into submission.
It is a sport about pitting one man’s skill, one man’s courage and heart, against the other. But sadly, boxing is also undeniably a business.

Pacquiao has a date with the Golden Boy in December. But the fight with Oscar de la Hoya is more about the money, the mega money, than anything else. It is an anomaly. Entertaining for sure but the disparity in size and weight between Pacquiao, who started his professional boxing career two pounds below the junior flyweight limit of 108 pounds, and de la Hoya is such that the fight can only be called a circus of some sort.

Whether Pacquiao can fight effectively at 147 pounds, after putting on an additional 12 pounds above his fighting weight, is doubtful. The same can be said for de la Hoya who will have to fight at 147 pounds after competing as a junior middleweight and above since 2001.

Neither Pacquiao nor de la Hoya will therefore be at his fighting best for the December 6 fight which is now being dubbed as the “Dream Match.”

In contrast, a third fight with Marquez is the only logical fight left for Pacquiao after de la Hoya. Pacquiao has said that his fight with the Golden Boy is the first of his last three fights as he intends to retire from boxing in time for the 2010 elections.

Aside from the de la Hoya fight, Pacquiao is also eying another mega-buck fight with Ricky Hatton in an attempt, perhaps, to shore up his campaign kitty. Whether there is any wisdom in squandering his hard earned money to win a political seat is not for us to say. What Pacquiao does with his money is his own business. But there is little doubt that money is becoming a big factor in Pacquiao’s choice of who to fight.

Then, too, Marquez is not getting any younger. Marquez is only six months younger than de la Hoya who, at 35, is now considered way past his prime. If Pacquiao dilly-dallies further in fighting Marquez, he may lose his chance in validating his crown as the best pound for pound fighter.

After winning his fight with Casamayor, Marquez once again issued the oft-repeated challenge for a third do-or-die battle. Marquez has certainly gone to a lot of trouble to bait Pacquiao to a third outing, even going as far as to come to the Philippines just to press for a third fight.

But will Marquez’s decisive win over the previously undefeated Casamayor finally make the fighter in Pacquiao listen? Or will Pacquiao become another de la Hoya who is first and foremost a businessman?

The Lord Of The Ring

I can not begrudge Manny Pacquiao for wanting to fight Oscar de la Hoya, the Golden Boy of boxing. But for the life of me, I can not understand why a great fighter like de la Hoya would choose to take the easy way out and fight Manny for his swan song.

For Manny, well as they say the man’s got to eat. But for a future Hall of Famer who has given fight fans some of the more memorable fights in the history of boxing, de la Hoya is chickening out by fighting a much much smaller fighter, even if that fighter happens to be the best pound for pound boxer today.

Consider the tale of the tape: Oscar stands 5’10.5’’, Manny, when he’s got his socks on, 5’6.5”. Oscar weighs 150 pounds (as of May 2008 when he fought Steve Forbes) but fights at 154 pounds. Manny, on the other hand, has just had one fight at 135 pounds. And at 73 cm, Oscar enjoys a reach advantage of a kilometric 6 centimeters.

To emerge a winner, Manny Pacquiao needs only to do one thing---show up. He does not need to beat up Oscar, a long shot in any case. He does not need to win. Nor even score a draw, another long shot. If, by the last round, Manny happens to be still standing and trading punches, then he would have won. Again. Even without the rematch.

By contrast, Oscar, just by picking Manny, has already lost. Forget all the talk about Oscar wanting to fight only the best pound for pound fighter. Forget even all his talk about avenging the Mexicans. In fact by picking Manny, Oscar has already done the Mexicans a great disservice. Whichever way you look at it, the match up looks every bit the spectacle of the big bully picking on the smallest kid in the school yard. Even if the smallest kid happens to pack some serious punching power.

In any case there are no Mexicans, Filipinos, or Canadians in boxing. There are only individual fighters, devoid of nationality, devoid of race.

If the fight were in the context of the movie Lord of the Rings, would Aragorn pick on, forgive the comparison, Frodo? I don’t think so. In fact, in the movie as well as the book, Aragorn makes it a habit to stride to the battlefield and look for the biggest, baddest troll. Orcs he leaves to men of lesser stature, to dwarves and elves. And, of course, to Frodo and the Hobbits.

If Oscar were Aragorn, to take the argument further, he would have chosen to fight Margarito, the biggest, baddest troll of his weight class. That would have been boxing. In its purest, most perfect form. But as we have now seen, Oscar is not Aragorn even if he has reigned as the Golden Boy for the longest time.

As for Frodo? The book and the movie tell us he vanquished the Lord of the Ring himself. But then again, that’s just fantasy.