Manny Pacquiao Still Not the Greatest

Buyers beware and be cautioned by boxing experts who are not deceived by the Pacquiao versus Joshua Clottey fight scheduled on March 6 that Top Rank's Promoter Bob Arum is trying to sell to the gullible paying public. Somebody told me Arum said Clottey is an exciting world class boxer but I beg to disagree -  World class? Probably yes. Exciting? son of a gun, no!

How could this bum be an exciting pugilist after what happened in the second half of his Miguel Cotto fight where Clottey had Cotto on the run but was still tentative in trying to close the show resulting in him losing the fight against the already gassed-out and spent Cotto. Still it would not surprise me if the 50, 000-seater Cowboys Stadium in Dallas gets filled up by fans who would pay to see this low quality match-up put featuring  Pacquaio and put together by “snake-merchant” Arum. Paying public listen - Arum won, and you are going to lose.

Cotto and Clottey tussle do not make Pacquiao the greatest

The Clottey fight (like the Cotto’s tussle) will not make Manny the greatest boxer despite Arum’s pronouncement after the Cotto fight that the Filipino is the greatest boxer he ever saw while comparing him to Muhammad Ali, Marvin Hagler, and Sugar Ray Leonard. Really. Pacquiao’s opponents were sissies when compared to what Sugar Ray Leonard and Muhammed Ali had.

Who has Manny really fought? Ricky Hatton, Oscar de la Hoya, and Cotto? all these chaps were washed-up before they fought Manny. Hatton was already damaged by Floyd Mayweather, Jr.  De la Hoya was already cracking when he struggled against Felix Sturm in that controversial fight in June 5, 2004. He lost to Pacquaio not only because he was over the hill, but he lost to an enemy called weight loss and a friend quipped “That’s not the Oscar that treats us with jaw-dropping fights against Julio Cesar Chavez, Ike Quartey, Fernando Vargas, and Shane Mosley. That was a zombie fighting Pacquiao”.

Cotto was the guy we saw on TV that was repeatedly beaten to a pulp by Antonio Margarito in the second half of their July 26, 2008 fight. I told Philippine TV and radio before that Manny should not be fighting Cotto because that was not the quality fight people should be watching. I said he should fight Mosley – the real deal in the Welterweight Division.  That would have been a fight instead of the mismatch against Cotto -- as what the score cards showed us.

And again here’s Arum giving us this trash. He said the guy is the best opponent for Manny. For Christ sake, I though he says for “money sake”. Clottey won the first half when he fought the damaged Cotto, but blew it out when he transformed himself to Forrest Gump by running from one post to another.

All the “marquee” fighters Pacquiao fought still do not make him the greatest. His victory against elite boxers like Antonio Barrera (first match), and Juan Manuel Marquez were not enough to send him to the hippocampus of boxing spectators. these fighters were no Tommy Hearn, Roberto Duran, Hagler, and George Foreman who all knocked-out most of their quality opponents before the end of third round - They were no trike driver Edwin Valero, they were juggernauts.

But Hearns was annihilated by Sugar Ray Leonard in a see-saw war that people thought was a replay of Iwo Jima . Duran gave it up to on that famous “No Mas (I gave up) when he thought Leonard was riding in a Ferrari with a machine gun on his hand that peppered him mercilessly with bullets. Hagler lost to Leonard in that “Hambuger Hill” battle that until now boxing fanatics did not stop to argue.

But playing and replaying that fight on a DVD -that was brought by a friend in the burgeoning pirated DVD stores in the Philippines –convinced me Ray won it.

Foreman was a guy even Jim Croce’s bad-bad Leroy Brown detest not to cross path.

He was the guy who after hitting the favorite Joe Frazier –whom he knocked down already five times in that second round encounter -- with a right uppercut to the chin, Frazier’s feet jerked-up half-a-foot from the canvas before he landed to the canvass.

“Really, is that true,” asked by former Philippine House Speaker and rabble-rouser Congressman Jose de Venecia whom I narrated the story.

“Yes sir, Mr. Speaker, just opened YouTube.Com (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yn6KIwnQd2c&feature=related) for you to see one of the greatest treats the hurt business gave us.

John Consulta of GMA-7 TV, who was with us, was seemingly amazed of what the Foreman-Frazier brouhaha brought.

George was a guy that everybody knew would bitch-slapped the greatest fighter Muhammad Ali in the “Ramble in the Jungle” in Zaire .

But it was the other way around. Ali treated the world with a Mona Lisa- liked master piece called Rope-a-Dope that made Foreman looked like a drunk hoar after he staggered, twirled, and land big time his back at the dais at 8th round from Ali’s left hook that flipped up Foreman’s head before Ali gave him the coup d’ grace’s hard straight right to the face.

So unless Pacquaio agrees to submit to the Olympic style drug testing against Floyd Mayweather, Jr., or fights the dangerous Shane Mosley instead of the useless Clottey, we will forever have to go under an Acacia tree and debate whether Pacquaio can be called the greatest after he defeated Mayweather, or Mosley (were the opponents these guys have beaten at the level of the opponents that Ali and Leonard have beaten ?), or whether Mayweather and Mosley were the greatest after defeating or knocking-out Pacquaio – whose prowess could probably be much higher than Duran, Hearn, Foreman, and even The Incredible Hulk?