My piece on Clottey is up on Nomas, and reading it over again I was pretty hard on him in ways I generally try not to be. Meaning it takes unbelievable courage and skill to get into that ring at the lowest level, let alone the places Clottey has gone. But there was something about the way he fought that was so galling, disheartening, and unseemly that I still feel myself seething as I type. It’s one thing for a man to think better of it and crack a little once he’s been to the mountaintop – De La Hoya or Barrera– but to carelessly crash into the shoals after a long and arduous journey is true tragedy.
Now I may be giving Clottey too much agency, too much credit for self-knowledge and choice, but I don’t think so. The pain is in the knowing, and I think Clottey did. I wondered on nomas if Clottey had ever read Hamlet, because the contentment he might find in his role as poor soul, as the aggrieved, might be a short lived pleasure. If he might agree with Hamlet that, “I could be bounded in a nutshell, and count myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I have bad dreams.” I imagine Clottey slept better than I did on Saturday night, but I suspect it won’t be long before the demons come.
* I’m heartbroken over the delay in the Mayweather/Marquez fight. I was really looking forward to it, two masters at the height of their craft, a rare gift. There has been talk that it’ll be delayed until September, but the details need to be worked out. This obviously makes the likelihood of a Pacquiao/Cotto match increase considerably, as I doubt Pac wants to wait until next year to get into the ring again. The fight makes sense for Bob Arum, both Pacquiao and Cotto’s promoter - he will not have to share the promotion fee and is guaranteed a winner – but I can’t help feeling a little uneasy about the whole thing. I think Pacquiao will win, I always felt he matched up well with Cotto, but we’re so close to serendipity, Mayweather/Pacquiao, that I don’t want to risk it.
There are certain people with patience, who wait to eat their meal in the proper order; but we have the most delicious desert waiting in the kitchen, and I fear our appetite may be spoiled before it gets to the table.
I’ll move on eventually, but I still have more to say. Check out the last post on Pacquiao if you didn’t already, I think it’s my best piece so far. I promised a friend I’d do a close reading of the fight and though it’s late I’m going to go through with it. Here is a poor link to the fight if you want to follow along, you can probably find better. I’ll be using the time stamp from the HBO counter.
1st round
3:00-2:45: First thing we see is the size. Pacquiao may be smaller in the upper body, but he doesn’t seem disadvantaged otherwise. Next, Hatton’s clumsy footwork as opposed to Manny’s superfast darting balance. Against a normal fighter Hatton is faster and finds it relatively easy to close distance, in the first few seconds one can already see that’s not so.
2:30 The first landed blow is a sneaky right hook. Hatton comes forward with a tepid jab, looking to apply pressure, but Manny’s timing and precision shows immediately. We could almost stop here, as this first blow is basically the story of the fight. Hatton and Mayweather Sr. knew this punch was coming, had made fun of it on 24/7, but there was nothing he could do about it. If you look at 5:34 they talk about the move, prepare for it, but were instantly unable to respond. There has been a lot of revisionist history since the fight, blaming Hatton for leaving himself unprotected as he lunged in, but it’s the story of his career. Against most fighters he is fast enough to close the distance, against Pacquiao he was crushed every time. It's not that he didn't do this right, or he made that mistake, it's that Ricky Hatton just isn't as good at boxing as Manny Pacquiao.
2:10 After a few seconds of trying to mug Pacquiao on the inside, the fighters gain separation. Hatton is again forced to wade through Pacquiao’s punching zone and eats another solid right hook. A good fighter will be able to time shots like this a few times a fight. Lazcano landed a good one on Hatton in their fight. Malignaggi landed a couple. Pacquiao landed two in the first fifty seconds. Not with full power, but with incredible accuracy.
1:55 Here we see where Hatton is really doomed. He had just managed to slip the Pacquiao right for the first time, and at center ring throws his first earnest right at distance, but Pacquiao easily slips the punch and lands his first left hand. I think Hatton felt okay, as though he could eat the right, but that first left was thrown with force. The difference in speed, accuracy, and class is already clear. Hatton is a fast fighter, but he looks in poor shape already. He can’t close the distance safely, and at range his inferior handspeed and amateurish form gives him no chance.
1:46 Hatton manages to slip a left, but Pacquiao again lands the right hook at half speed and ducks away.
1:30 Pacquiao lands another right hook, and this one he has thrown for keeps. It is a perfect shot, comes from underneath, and Hatton goes stiff legged. Lampley misses it, calling a Hatton shot, but you can hear the sound of the impact. When watching it live I was already jumping up and down screaming. I truly felt the fight was over. Hatton has a very particular way of looking hurt. He stands upright and lurches with stiff, tin-man movements. Floyd had him this way multiple time before he put him down, Manny is not so merciful.
1:00 Again we see Hatton’s problem. Taking some time to regather himself he waits at distance, throwing a few jabs and exhibiting his version of “boxing.” This is what Teddy Atlas claims he should have done from the beginning, but it was really no sort of option. Manny easily manages to slip everything that Hatton throws at distance and lands two straight lefts before Hatton can even manage to raise his hands. In the David Diaz fight we saw much the same predicament, but while Diaz was slower, he managed to last with his high guard. Though marginally quicker, Hatton could in no way slip the straight left at distance. Floyd managed to nail him with dozens of his equivalent straight rights, but he didn’t throw with the same conviction and power that Manny did.
:56 The knockdown. Pacquiao throws the same right hook he had landed three times before, but Hatton, already buzzed from the previous straight lefts crumples to the floor. It’s a beautiful rhythm shot, perfectly balanced and thrown while dodging the counter. Again, people claim that Hatton did something wrong, which is true, but ultimately meaningless. This is the way he fights. It is flawed, but works against even very good fighters. Only a special few have the ability to take advantage of it. Tszyu, Castillo, Urango, Collazo, Malignaggi; they could all see the opening, and they could even find it occasionally, but not the way Pacquiao did. Floyd Mayweather waited the whole fight for the left hook; in fact he landed the exact blow in the exact spot in the ring in the 8th round of his fight against Hatton, two rounds before he achieved the knockdown. He had what it takes to execute. The flaw is much easier to see when someone with speed, force, and accuracy is able to lay it bare.
:26 Hatton tries to regain his composure, but there is nowhere for him to go. He can’t risk taking the lunge to get inside, and at distance Pac’s handspeed is almost comical. Hatton careens into the ropes, a look of pure haplessness on his face.
:08 Pacquiao scores the second knockdown on a straight left that connects through the glove to Hatton’s face. The only question after the first knockdown was if he could last the round, and he does an admirable job of taking a few punches, slipping a few, and is ultimately fortunate he goes down here. If he had managed to stay up a few more seconds Pac likely would have scored the killing blow. As the bell rings he tries for one more right hook but it comes up short.
Round 2:
2:37 Hatton comes out aggressively and Pacquiao responds in kind. He seems to be pressing a little bit. At 2:37 he loads up on a huge left that overshoots the target and opens himself to a ragged counter shot by Hatton. He wanted to end it with this shot but started from a little too far away. This is the same shot that he uses later to finish the fight. He threw it with full force, but mistimed it slightly.
2:31 Pac throws a 1-2, the jab followed by the straight left. This is his money combination, the one that he used to wipe out Barrera and batter Marquez. It lands flush on Hatton’s nose. It’s the first time in the fight he leads with it, and it’s still as effective as ever.
1:45 Pacquiao throws a hard and brutal combination, a left uppercut beneath the ribcage and then a straight left to the face that partially lands. Hatton almost seemed as if he was getting back into the fight, but the way he immediately drops his right hand to cover up his side shows that the shot hurt him. Manny’s body punching has gotten much better over the years. Though he didn’t land many here, this one was a good one.
1:03 This is an important moment. Pacquiao again throws that supercharged overhand left, and this time he gets even closer. Manny throws it with full power and it lands on Hatton’s upper chest. It is the exact same sequence as the final blow. Hatton lunges with a weak jab to close the distance and Pacquiao slings it like a baseball pitch, just a few inches too low. You can hear the loud smack as Manny’s fist hits the collarbone. The first one at the beginning of the round missed by a good distance, this one was closer, it’s like he’s honing in, timing the target. One gets the feeling he could have more easily continued landing the right hook, but he knows there is little danger, and the more powerful left will end the show.
:33 Manny throws another left to the body, left to the head combination that badly wobbles Hatton. He is throwing with full power, no fear. He seems to want to end it in one shot, not the lighter, quicker combination punching he used to force the stoppage against De La Hoya.
:08 The knockout. Not much description needed. It was the same moment as 1:03. Hatton tries to jab his way in, in fact does land the jab, but he can’t close the distance and Manny connects with full power. Hatton drops his right hand, a silly mistake, but again, one that he always makes. Manny seemed to use those two earlier misses as measuring shots, coming closer and closer before he finally timed it right. This was no lucky shot. It was thrown with full force and bad intentions. You can hear Manny grunt as he throws it, the only time he did so the whole fight. It’s an amazing shot, the kind one dreams about.
People view Pacquiao as a kind of naïf, but nothing about this performance was thoughtless, he enacted a game plan with brutal and scientific efficiency. It reminded me of the Floyd Mayweather fight with Phillip Ndou. In that match Roger Mayweather told Floyd on the ringwalk that Ndou was open to the pull-counter, meaning a drawing back to avoid the jab followed by a counter right hand. Mayweather proceeded to execute the move with frightening precision. It’s one thing to see the flaw, to know the opening, it’s quite another to be able to make it flesh.
What does this tell us about future fights? There will obviously be time for this later, but in my mind Manny has two potential opponents. If Cotto beats Clottey next month the fight is possible, as they are both represented by Arum. Cotto was the one big welter I always thought Manny could beat, because he’s not huge, and he’s somewhat fragile. While we can save a closer analysis for this later, take a look at what happened the last time Cotto fought a left handed 140 pounder. This is poor quality, but check out the punch that lands at the 4:55 mark.
Yes, Cotto has clearly improved, but that punch sure looks familiar.
And the other fight, obviously, is Floyd Money Mayweather Jr. It’s almost too big to talk about yet, like cancer or all you can eat bananas. A year ago I wouldn’t have believed it, but who’s to say Pacquiao couldn’t do it. Look at this.
And this, at 1:05.
Another blatantly unfair video. I’m picking out a couple of moments over the course of a career, incidental contacts in rounds that Floyd probably didn’t even lose. I could find dozens where Manny was similarly vulnerable. And yet, a man that can execute with such precision… who’s to say it’s not possible? All it takes is a fist, in motion, at a specific point and time in a specific spot, and you have… word made flesh.
While the rest of the world has moved on I’m still fixated on that explosive left. I’ve probably watched the fight two dozen times now and one starts to notice different things. For example that Pacquiao missed the exact same punch thirty seconds earlier by mere inches, landing hard on Hatton’s upper chest. For another, the sound. Not only at the moment of impact, but right before, a little grunt that Pacquiao makes as he loads up, planting his feet and swiveling his hips and exhaling just so, the sound that a man gives when he’s hard at work, straining, but in the moment.
I’ve been thinking about Angela’s post recently. What Pacquiao means to Filipino’s, they way he is of them, and conversely the ways he is foreign to us. Thinking back to my own infatuation with him I wonder how I truly saw him at the start; a potential great, or an amusing curiosity? He is different, and it’s hard to accept that.
Boxing has its’ familiar tropes; the old versus the young, the boxer versus the puncher, the physical versus the scientific, the matador versus the bull, and the boxer as extension of racial/national identity. We expect certain things from certain fighters; African American’s are athletic, slick, and cautious; Mexicans are body-punchers, destroyers, and unbreakable. Eastern Europeans are powerful, robotic, and deliberate; African’s are rough, crude, and super-tough. It’s profiling but it’s ingrained. The fans expect it and need it; it creates frameworks and narrative arcs. A fighter comes from a tradition, and that tradition turns mere tribalism into a kind of generational inheritance.
And that’s the thing about Pacquiao that made it so hard for him to reach this point; not only a superstar, an athletic hero and pugilistic curiosity, but a recognized and real-deal ring genius. We lack cultural antecedents. Excepting those from the distant past; Fighting Harada, Pancho Villa, Flash Elorde; there has been a certain kind of Asian fighter we’ve come to know recently. I’m talking about In Jin Chi, Duk Koo Kim, and the fighters we hear about in the midget divisions. They share a tradition of dour fearlessness, limited athleticism, and grim determination. Is it unfair to group a multiregional group of several billion people? Clearly it is, but boxing is all about comparisons and fantasy judgments, and it’s hard to break from the old guard.
And that’s why I feel it has been difficult for Pacquiao to get to that last step of greatness. The money is one thing, and his effervescent style and militant good-nature meant he would never have a hard time building a fan base; but hell, Ricky Hatton has legions but that didn’t get for him even the limited respect which he earned with results in the ring. The casual fan he has convinced, the ones who should know better are those he’s had the most trouble with. He simply doesn’t fit the right profile for a pound for pound king.
Ray Leonard, Marvin Hagler, Julio Ceasar Chavez, Pernell Whitaker, Evander Holyfield, Roy Jones, Oscar De La Hoya, Shane Mosley, Bernard Hopkins, and Floyd Mayweather. Over the past 25 years these were, for the most part, the pound for pound kings. I see two clear profiles; one is racial- black or Mexican- and the other is career paths-amateur great or long slow slog to acceptance. Pacquiao fits none of these categories, he is racially distinct and his explosive entrance to the mainstream following his first Barrera fight, wholly unexpected, didn’t follow the characteristic path. He was neither a pre-packaged superstar like Leonard, or Jones, or De La Hoya, or an underappreciated professional who could no longer be ignored, like Hopkins or Hagler.
Pacquiao burst onto the scene; deeply flawed but triumphant, like the romantic notion of the rural physicist, whom, outside the confines of the academy, uncovers a new theory, all ragged around the edges and unartful, but holding some new but deep and abiding universal truth. And the keepers of the flame snarl and scoff and point to the frays and failures, but the thing holds firm, and with work and patience and polish turns into something even more powerful and true. That was Pacquiao’s path, and I think it explains much of the hesitation. He came from outside the establishment. He broke the rules. People kept putting more and higher thresholds for him to cross and when he did it still wasn’t enough.
Much of it is the nature of things. I recently read a piece referencing thoughts of contemporary writers on Duran’s place as a lightweight. While universally recognized today as one of the three greatest ever, most experts hesitated to put him in the top ten. People are conservative, and those that know the most are often the last to see the obvious. A thing is what it is, they say.
And Pacquiao was that. All he had was the straight left and an excess of fight. They saw the leaky defense and the lunges: and in an amateur great - an ordained hero - they would have seen the potential for improvement, they would have marveled at the manifest gifts and made way for the polish of the years. True, he didn’t have the economy of motion that marked the greats, all flailing and flopping and raising of the arms as he rumbled back into the scrum. But since he popped out so unexpectedly, with no framework, there was no empathy, only conditions as he mowed down the greats. And they waited for the fall.
And many wait still, his flaws will tell. Hatton was made for him, De La Hoya was too old, and Diaz too limited. But all it is now is saving face. He might lose his next fight, they want to send him in with the lions, but he already stands atop a mountain of ordinary heroes, from where he stands there is no going back. I exchanged emails with Graydon Gordian from the excellent Spurs blog a few weeks back. He told me that; “I have never been able to give myself over wholly to the Pac-man. Something about his personality, in particular his prolific smile, gives me pause.” That same smile which Angela found so charming, so personal and of her tradition was so foreign to him. In others a smile in the ring walk is cold, confident, intimidating. But Pacquiao’s is different, that of a child’s long awaited satisfaction, or of a simple man’s simple pleasure. I would say he had the temperament of a sociopath, the joy in battle and seemingly genuine fatalistic worldview, but I think it would be taking something from him. He is a revolutionary, but he is of something, a living worldview that I can’t place but is nonetheless profound and strong.
Usually the flash judgments and Johnny-Walker wisdom are deeply flawed, but Pacquiao is the exception. He’s a different special something, one that fades and is obscured by close analysis, easy to pick apart and dismiss; but that’s the difference between science and inspiration, or at least it’s the distance that connects them. There are times to look away from the telescope and at the stars. That’s Pacquiao.
Today marks our first ever guest post at Boxiana. I'd like to profoundly thank Angela Garbes for her first-person account of the Pacquiao-Hatton fight. Check out her blog.
A week after the Pacquiao-Hatton fight, there are two things I can’t get out of my head.
First, a nagging chorus, thousands of British voices strong, singing—over and over—their Ricky Hatton cheer, to the tune of Winter Wonderland: “There’s only ooone Ricky Hatton! There’s only ooone Ricky Hatton! We’re walking along, singing a song, walking in a Hatton Wonderland!” It’s a persistent, beer-soaked, insipid song; it bullies its way into the brain and hangs around.
Then there is the smile of Manny Pacquiao—joyful, ear-to-ear wide and almost goofy, accentuating his flat, bridgeless nose, so irrepressible as to appear childlike, so natural it’s infectious. For a boxer, expected to appear stone-faced, stoic—purposefully intimidating, as Hatton surely did—Pacquiao’s smile is surprising, unnerving. Powerful.
It’s Pacquiao’s smile that actually matters, exposing that Christmas carol-cum-fight song as mere distraction, and promptly dismissing it from my mind.
The Pacquiao-Hatton fight was, without a doubt, the most exciting, passionate, and awesome sporting event of my life. The feeling remains in my bones long after the vibration and deafening ring of 16,000 screaming spectators has passed through me. Unsurprisingly, it was sensory overload. There was a constant barrage of improbable sights: a punch thrown so hard during an under card bout that it sent a mouth guard flying; the strange thrill of being able to spot Jack Nicholson in his ringside seat from far away; women in Lucite heels and gold glittered bikinis parading around with giant signs at the end of every round; sitting next to my uncle Xerxes, who had traveled all the way from Philippines to see this fight with his son, Xerxes Jr., whom he had not seen in six years; a little brown man knocking a bigger white man unconscious as though it was the easiest thing in the world.
* * *
I’ve always joked that Filipinos are the Rodney Dangerfield of the Asian world. Filipinos far outnumber Thai people in the United States, yet how many Filipino restaurants can you think of off the top of your head? Compared to other Asian countries, Filipino culture is not widely known. Filipinos are happy, hospitable people who love to eat, dance, and sing. The cuisine and way of life are not admired or celebrated the way, say, Japanese and Chinese are. Looking back, five hundred years of Spanish colonial rule left the Philippines without their native religion, the only Catholic country in all of Asia. And though the U.S. preferred to call it a “territory” rather than a “colony,” the Philippines spent the first half of the 20th century under American rule. People remember Imelda Marcos and her 3,400 shoes, but ask them to name another famous Filipino, and most come up short.
No respect. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t fierce pride.
It’s no exaggeration to say that Manny Pacquiao is a national hero, an icon. When PacMan fights, the Philippine Army call a truce with both the communist New People's Army and the Muslim insurgents in the south so that everyone can tune in. The Philippines is a poor country—40 percent of the population lives in abject poverty, and the economy depends heavily on the billions of dollars sent home annually by the millions of Filipinos working abroad. Anyone who’s watched the HBO 24/7 Pacquiao-Hatton is familiar with Pacquiao’s improbable rise to glory and wealth: he began working as a young boy, selling donuts on the streets of one of the poorest, most violent cities, General Santos, living in a dirt floor shack. There are no platitudes here: Pacquiao is a unifying figure, carrying the hopes and dreams of the Filipino people on his shoulders. What’s most striking is that Pacquiao is more than willing to take this on.
“All I’m trying to do is give happiness and joy to the people,” Manny has said. And after he destroys his opponents, Pacquiao says simply, “Nothing personal for me. Just doing my job.” You get the feeling he actually means it.
Consider Pacquiao’s nicknames. He is known as both “The People’s Champion” and, even better, “The National Fist.” When Pacquiao emerged from the locker room and made his way down the tunnel to the ring last week, shrouded in a Philippine-flag robe, all the while looking loose and excited, unable to stop himself from breaking into the occasional smile, he did so to the tune of “Lahing Pinoy” (translation: “The Filipino Race”), a rallying cry in the guise of a pop song whose opening line calls for the Filipino flag to be raised high, then instructs its listeners to shout to the world, “Filipino! Filipino! My race is Filipino!”
Now consider this: The singer of the song is Manny Pacquiao himself.
In true celebrity fashion, Pacquiao is dabbling in a singing career and has released a few singles in the Philippines. His best-known song is “Para Sa Yo Ang Laban Na To,” which translates to “This Fight’s For You.” The song, far from subtle, yet gently and reassuringly crooned, promises that Pacquiao will never surrender: “Even my life I will risk for you / I will protect you with my hands / This is the only plan I can think of / So that there will be unity among my fellow Filipino.”
* * * Pacquiao not only represents the hopes of millions of people in the Philippines, but also millions of Filipinos and Filipino-Americans in the United States. Filipinos in the States are used to the idea that we can succeed, but what we’re not used to seeing is someone who actually looks like us succeed on such a high level. In America, the list of well-known Filipinos (mostly mixed race entertainers) stirs little excitement: Kirk Hammet from Metallica, that one guy from the Black Eyed Peas, Arnel Pineda, the guy who became the new lead singer for Journey via a reality television show, and rumored fractional Filipinos Dean Cain and Rob Schneider. But in Pacquiao, we have a rare thing: a Filipino athlete, a role model, someone who is the best in the world at what he does—someone that Jay-Z, Jack Nicholson, and New York Giant star Brandon Jacobs will pay thousands of dollars to see. A real deal celebrity. But Pacquiao’s smile betrays him. When he flashes it, he seems as familiar to all Filipinos as an uncle or cousin. In the same way that I occasionally forget that I don’t actually know Barack Obama and have never had a conversation with him about basketball, it’s easy for me to feel like I know Manny Pacquiao, that I may have sung karaoke with him at a second cousin’s baby’s Christening party. It was barely a surprise to me when the young man in a Team Pacquiao windbreaker sitting next me on my return flight from Vegas to Seattle told me that he knew Manny. And that Manny had generously purchased fifteen tickets so he and his family could watch the fight together. And that while training in LA, Manny, despite his millions, lives in a small, crowded three bedroom apartment with ten other men, one of whom, Buboy, cooks all the food for them.
There is something wildly humble and down-to-earth about Pacquiao. ESPN boxing columnist Dan Rafael wrote about his experience watching a DVD of the Pacquio-Hatton fight with a gracious Pacquiao in his hotel room the day after. Pacquiao had not yet seen the fight, watching intently while working his way through a plate of steak and white rice. When the knockout punch was thrown, Pacquiao instinctually put down his fork and made the sign of the cross, praying that Hatton was ok, even though he knew Hatton was fine. This is no doubt exactly what countless old Filipino ladies watching the night before did.
Last week I came across this video of Pacquiao unwinding with this friends after a day of training. The two-and-a-half minute video is silly and mundane—Manny plays guitar and his friends lip synch and dance to a Filipino singer’s verision of “Lonely Teardrops.” A lamp goes out; the camera man is giggling the entire time; a paunchy man uses a banana as a microphone. But it brought a smile as wide as Manny’s to my face because, as any Filipino could tell you, this scene is likely to occur at any Filipino gathering, anytime, anywhere.
I had a suspicion this would be Manny's masterpiece, the type of performance to end all the speculation and reveal to the doubters that special grace that comes so rarely in life. But still, not this, not this way.
Some revelations are hidden even from the devout. As always I am humbled to see someone reach the limits. The palm at the end of the mind, beyond the last thought.
I'm excited and having a little trouble sleeping. For my full preview/prediction, click here, also some terrific stuff in the comments. Some final thoughts on the day of the big event:
• Don’t know if this is a good sign or not, but seeing the Big Dog with the Pacman makes me feel good inside.
• Been having some discussion of making weight in the comments section and this picture of Hatton, looking extremely gaunt, is a fine example of the way the weigh in process is used. You can just see how drained Hatton is, his sallow skin almost the shade of death here. He’s a pro, came in right at 140, and should be fine, but I bet he has already put on ten pounds in liquid tonight. I could be wrong but I don’t see him having all that many more fights at 140. Manny weighed in at 138. They look the same size here, but I expect Hatton’s upper body to be noticeably larger than Pac’s come fight night. Manny seems to keep all his weight in those legs.
• Something I meant to talk more about was what impact Manny’s southpaw stance will have on the fight; here is my amateur technical analysis. The general consensus is that, because of the angle of the bodies, an orthodox fighter’s left jab is less useful and the straight right becomes the best punch (this is why Bernard Hopkins is always so successful against them). Hatton has often struggled with left-handers, and I think the primary reason is that he has probably the weakest straight right of any elite level boxer in the world today. He hurt Malignaggi with one in his last fight, but even that was thrown with poor form, landing not on the knuckles but with a downward clubbing slap. He throws it almost like a basebal,l and is going to have a hard time catching the elusive Pacquiao. Though Hatton can hook and uppercut with the right once he gets inside, the poor form will give Pacquiao a huge advantage.
Now, this assumes that Pacquiao stays conservative and doesn’t square his body as he used to do earlier in his career. If he gets overly aggressive and squares up to throw combinations, the jab and left hook to the body, Hatton’s best punch, will come into play. In my mind's eye, though, I keep seeing Hatton lunging in with the left as Pacquaio steps to the side and lands one of his short, blind lefts directly on the point of the chin to hurt Hatton. The question is will Hatton be able to handle it, or will he get rocked and stopped? I’m leaning toward a stoppage.
• I made a couple references to this before, but I’ve always loved this footage of Manny shadowboxing from a few years ago. Only Mayweather Jr’s jump rope routine compares.
• Speaking of Floyd Mayweather Jr. it looks like the fight with Marquez is being made. I gave some preliminary thoughts, but right now all I can say is it’s good to have Floyd back. The sport is better for having him in it. He makes big events and this will be another. The fight will be at a catch weight of 144. I wish Floyd would have come down to 140 because even though I don’t think it would have made a difference to the fight itself, I think it would have changed how the event was viewed. I also wish we’d have gotten to see the rubber match between Marquez and Pacquiao. But hell, it’s a superfight between two great boxers. There are so few examples of truly special fighters going at it, so I'm on board.
• Longtime readers of Freedarko might remember Elie Seckbach for his NBA interviews. Here he is at the Wildcard, Freddie Roach’s gym, where he finds some Hatton fans. He’s a lot less awkward than I remember him.
• This video is silly, so I feel sort of bad saying that it's also hilarious and worth watching to the end. This person did a very good job. For those of you who don’t know, Manny has a vastly inferior fighting brother, Bobby.
Do you remember the scene in Don’t Look Back when Donovan and Bob Dylan exchange songs in the hotel room? The first time I watched it I saw it as a competition, a lesson taught to the younger Donovan by the king; and watching it today there still seems to me a hint of cruelty and competition in Dylan’s performance, a self-mastery and inward flame that finds satisfaction in the display. When he sings “It’s All Over Now Baby Blue,” there is an element of sadism that comes through.
But more than that I see it for something greater than mere one-upmanship; it is the recorded embodiment of class. Class, like the word quality, is philosophically impossible to pin down, it’s a matter of taste and judgment, but it does exist. To me, class is determined by its ability to be recognized by even the most novice of observers. One need not love folk music, Bob Dylan, or even music in general to see that he was a body electric during this time, that thin wild mercury seemed to course out of him and was so powerful and obscene it almost made one want to look away. Donovan had a class of his own, a beautiful voice and fine lyrics, but he didn’t have what Dylan did, and that’s what makes the scene so powerful. To see great talent with superior talent is to see the palm at the end of the mind, the romance of perfection at the limits of human capacity. I have encountered this in my life once or twice, someone so special it is alarming.
When it happens in sports it is amazing to see. I remember reading about people weeping in the stands as Secretariat powered down the home stretch. I know nothing of tennis but I find watching Roger Federer transfixing. It’s rarely seen at the top level of sports, where someone is able to separate so clearly and completely from the top competition that the opponent ceases to matter. The event almost transforms from contest to performance. I find these displays of mastery the most rewatchable of fights, boxing as the manly art.
Only a few boxers have achieved this level in recent years; Floyd Mayweather, Roy Jones, and Pernell Whitaker come to mind, where the level of excellence on display is so profound that the rules applicable to the rest of the prizefighters no longer apply.
I think Manny Pacquiao is at that point. He moved from an A:class fighter to an S:class, superclass, fighter. I think it happened in the Diaz fight, and was further cemented in the De La Hoya fight. He has reached the apex of his abilities, a perfect combination of physical gifts and scientific repetition honed to a fine point, a killing edge, a prizefighting machine.
People say that Manny performed so well against Oscar because he was shot. And it’s true Oscar was well past his best, but there was something more to it. Oscar at least tried in the first two rounds, he competed, but after that it was different. I don’t think he was weakened by the weight or gun-shy, he was embarrassed. He was fighting in front of 100 million people worldwide and he was outclassed. Not beaten, outclassed. The type of difference that can’t be explained away by wrong game plans or a bad night, but the recognition that the man across from you is superior in every way, and there is nothing you can do about it. What a terrible feeling that must be, when you realized that you trained as hard as you could, you worked as hard as you could, but there is something so special across from you that you are powerless to act.
It’s speed, really. More than size or power, it’s speed that is so cruel, so visible. They say great timing beats great speed, but what if there is great speed and great timing and great power and great will; what then? That is what Hatton will have to answer. Hatton is a great fighter, an A:Class fighter. But he doesn’t have what Manny does right now. A few years ago, as an unfinished thing, Hatton would have had his way with Pacquiao, but I think that time is both past, and has not yet arrived. It will arrive soon, the type of radiant flame Pacquiao now possesses burns quickly, but he is raging now. It will take something special to quench it. Age, a far bigger opponent, or another S:class fighter are the only things that can stop Manny now. I learned that lesson in the De La Hoya fight. We are driving headlong into that moment; a Pacquiao-Mayweather fight seems almost ordained. The first fight between two S:Class boxers in their prime since Whitaker-Chavez, and before that Duran-Leonard. It is coming, because it must, a once a generation clash to clear the field and define the age.
In mythology the great heroes can only be conquered by the cruel Gods, or by even greater heroes. No wayward arrows unleashed in battle can slay them. It isn’t yet Manny’s fate to be brought down. He will win this fight, overcoming the stronger man because he must, because class will tell.
If Manny Pacquiao is a typhoon, an earthquake, a tornado, the ruptured fabric of the cosmos torn apart; a thing awe inspiring and impossible to avert one’s gaze from, then Ricky Hatton is the freezing ice, the hard lapping of the tide, and terrible toll of the ages on the living. It is a different type of heroism, one that for me is less striking and captivating, but nonetheless profoundly moving in its way. Ricky Hatton lacks any of the superpowers that make Pacquiao so mesmerizing, one doesn’t need any insight into the finer points of boxing to find even Manny’s shadowboxing breathtaking, but the Hitman’s charms are both more and less subtle.
There is little science to his work in the ring. Like John Henry with his hammer he swings away, and while he has nice footwork, good power, and terrific body shots, it is difficult to find any marks of romance or poetry to his rhythms. He is like a factory worker or miner, toiling away hour after hour. His is the mugging, slamming style of the industrial age; limbs caught in threshing machines, bones broken in mechanical mishaps, blunt trauma from automobile accidents; these are his fighting analogues. While Floyd Mayweather Senior tries to remake him as a smarter brawler, a scientific slugger, I find it unlikely we will see anything too divergent from his old ways. He is the steam engine, unrelenting and simple, and it will take something special to send him sprawling from his path.
Ricky Hatton TKO 12 Kostya Tszyu 2005: Ricky had gone nearly forty fights before he stepped up to the elite classes. Many, myself foremost, thought he was merely a protected British contender, content to take his money fighting limited opposition provided by promoter Frank Warren. When he took this fight against the aging Tszyu I expected a quick knockout, as Ricky’s reckless style and penchant for receiving deep and dangerous facial cuts in even domestic level bouts seemed a cruel preparation for an all time great puncher in Kostya Tszyu. But, fighting in front of tens of thousands of cheering fans, Hatton fought like a man possessed. He knew he couldn’t outbox the classically trained Tszyu, so he proceeded to mug him. Getting inside and wrestling him, draining the aged champion. He used elbows, shoulders, and his head to batter Tszyu in a fight whose outcome I still wonder about if presided over by a different ref. Still all credit to Hatton who battered Tszyu and walked through hellish shots in a close fight until Kostya retired on his stool, a broken man who never fought again. Hatton won the ring belt at junior welter, which he still holds today, the longest reigning champion in the sport.
Ricky Hatton UD 12 Luis Collazo 2006: Hatton moved up to welterweight to fight slick southpaw Collazo. In a desperate struggle he managed to smother and outwork Collazo for much of the fight, but any time the Puerto Rican got any distance Hatton was at a loss, unable to cope with the technically superior, faster, and longer armed opponent. Hatton was rocked in the later rounds, in fact was, I thought, knocked down in the 12th round, but managed to pull out the close decision through his consistent pressure. He had no business winning this fight, but it takes a man more special than Collazo, the type of guy who is just good enough to lose to any quality opponent he faces.
Ricky Hatton KO 4 Jose Luis Castillo 2007: Hatton rips Castillo’s insides open with a brutal left hook to the body. In his earlier career this had been Hatton’s trademark, like some translucent Mexican he threw body punches with murderous intent. But, since raising the level of his opposition he seemed to leave the punch behind. Here he used terrific footwork to land a dream punch, knocking out Castillo, a great fighter but badly damaged by too many wars.
Ricky Hatton TKO by 10 Floyd Mayweather Jr. 2007: In a fight he was never really competitive in (no matter what the HBO announcers tried to tell us) Hatton was outclassed by the former pound for pound king. There is no disgrace in losing to a preternatural talent, but the manner of the defeat was telling. Despite protests that the ref didn’t let Hatton “fight his fight,” Hatton was handled on both the inside and the outside, unable to deal with the precise punching of Mayweather. In the memorable sixth round he hit Mayweather on the back of the head, lost his cool, a point, and any semblance of a plan. He was embarrassed and started making desperate lunges, easily countered. When Mayweather led him into a left hook in the tenth round and he smashed head first into the ring post it was a humiliating end to a humiliating performance. Hatton vows never to fight at welterweight again.
Ricky Hatton UD 12 Juan Lazcano 2008: In his comeback he went against Lazcano, a career contender, and looked and fought uninspired. Coming off a weight binge, a hallmark of his career, he was flat, easily winning but looking like a fighter playing out the string. He was even hurt at one point. After the fight Ricky fired his trainer, Billy Graham, in a move long overdue, and hired Floyd Mayweather Sr.
Ricky Hatton TKO 11 Paulie Malignaggi 2008: In his finest performance since Castillo, Ricky bludgeons Malignaggi to a corner stoppage. Malignaggi is hurt in the second round, and after that fights to survive. Though limited by the weakest punch of any world-class fighter in the world, Malignaggi was thought a difficult opponent, but Hatton used brute force and relentless aggression to ground him down in a way not even Miguel Cotto had managed. Though some see improvement under Mayweather’s training, it is difficult to tell when the opposition has no weapons to trouble you.
The theme of Hatton’s career has been consistent. He is never spectacular, but nearly always effective, particularly at his natural 140 pounds. He is strong and solid there, any technical deficiencies countered by his aggression and brutality. He is an A class fighter, and can beat anyone at a certain level. The question is, does he have more than that? Can he beat a special fighter? Does the mace still work in an age of guns and lasers? All his disappointments, his doubters, will be erased if he can just manage to pin the little Filipino in a corner. He may not be able to catch him, but he might be able to ground him up, to tear and gnash and rend the thoroughbred. His destiny stands in the balance too, to be remembered as a fine champion, a popular slugger who made it big but came up short, or to be remembered as a hero to his people. The guy who was just folks, he could have a pint with the boys back home and then travel to distant lands and catch the ghost. It means so much.
I find his humble persona and everyman sensibilities yawn-inducing. I find his mugging style and naked aggression underwhelming. Even his excesses, the binge eating and drinking, seem so tepid when marked against the great tragic appetites of ring history. But there is something to be said for hard work, for a man who doesn’t quit. There is a certain romance in knowing oneself and the grinding hungry pressure of the ages, the valor of the loser who wins. I don’t think he can do it again, but he just might. Tomorrow the pick.
