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Thomas Hauser
“Boxing,” Hugh McIlvanney has written, “is a sport in which two men try to batter each other senseless. No matter how you dress it up, the basic objective is to render the opponent unconscious. You can say that more people are killed in motorcycle racing, that more people are killed in mountaineering. But in neither of those two activities is the fundamental objective to knock the other guy out. Motive, not statistics, will always separate boxing from other sports.”
On the night of March 13, 2010, Manny Pacquiao readied for battle in the futuristic city known as Cowboys Stadium. The gate that divides the visiting team’s dressing room had been lowered, cutting the room in half. Eight “red corner” undercard fighters were on the other side of the gate. Pacquiao’s opponent and the “blue corner” fighters were in smaller quarters.
Pacquiao had arrived at the stadium at 7:50pm. The earliest he would be called to the ring was 10:00 o’clock. For the better part of an hour, he talked on his cell phone and sent text messages to friends. Then he readied for battle.
One day earlier, Manny had weighed in at 145-3/4 pounds. His opponent, Joshua Clottey, had tipped the scales at the maximum contract weight of 147. The assumption was that Clottey now weighed at least 160. Pacquiao weighed 150. His body was sculpted without an ounce of superfluous fat. It was hard to imagine that, less than two years before, he’d fought after weighing in at 130 pounds.
Football, like boxing, is a violent game. In this same dressing room, gridiron warriors had suited up for battle. Forty-five players on each team that confronted the Dallas Cowboys had donned rib protectors, shoulder pads, arm pads, knee pads, hip pads, thigh pads, and helmets with face-masks. When the competition began, they’d protected each other and helped teammates off the turf after they’d been knocked down.
Pacquiao would enter the ring for combat naked from the waist up. A protective cup to safeguard his genitals would be his only shield. There would be no one to block for him. His head would be completely exposed.
The rules of football are designed to minimize direct blows to the head. Boxing requires them.
Pacquiao knows that there’s a dark side to his trade. Before each fight, he asks the people closest to him to “pray for me.”
Two centuries ago, William Hazlitt wrote of the hour before a fight begins, “It is then the heart sickens as you think what the two champions are about and how a short time will determine their fate.”
As the clock ticked down, Pacquiao shadow-boxed, moving around the center of the room.
There were final instructions from trainer Freddie Roach.
Then it was time. Manny left the dressing room and walked through the subterranean depths of the stadium. A tunnel of humanity lined by Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders – sexual icons of our time – lay ahead. The inside of the stadium was bathed in a silver other-worldly glow. Spotlights moved back and forth. Fifty thousand fans were screaming.
A smile played across Pacquiao’s face. He seemed to be without fear. In many respects, this fight in this stadium was about the future of boxing. But boxing is timeless. The essence of the competition he was about to engage in was the same as John L. Sullivan experienced on a barge towed up-river to avoid New York law enforcement authorities in 1881. After the bell rang, it would be no different, really, from what Joe Louis and Max Schmeling did at Yankee Stadium or the encounter between Muhammad Ali and George Foreman in the heart of Africa. It was the same as the competition among unarmed combatants at the first Olympiad in Greece thousands of years ago. A boy who once fought on the streets of the Philippines for pocket change also knew it well.
*
2010 began with the collapse of the proposed mega-fight between Manny Pacquiao and Floyd Mayweather Jr. Then, on January 10th, Bob Arum (Pacquiao’s promoter) announced an alternative plan. Manny would fight Joshua Clottey of Ghana at Cowboys Stadium in Arlington, Texas.
Thereafter, Bart Barry observed, “We come to the end of our Pacquiao-Mayweather mourning season. Fun as it is to gnash teeth and tremble at the future of prizefighting, the sun has risen anew, men still don gloves to resolve conflicts in manly ways, and a major venue awaits a major event.”
Pacquiao-Clottey was for Pacquiao’s World Boxing Organization 147-pound championship. As expected, the World Boxing Council tried to get into the act. “Jose [WBC president Jose Sulaiman] wanted to sell me a diamond schmata [a Yiddish term for a raggedy piece of clothing],” Arum confided. “I told him I wasn’t interested. I paid the WBC US$41,000 for the belt we gave Manny after he beat Miguel Cotto. Enough is enough.”
Three themes were central to the promotion. The first, of course, was the persona of Manny Pacquiao.
Manny came to Dallas on fire, both as a fighter and as an attraction. Three times during the previous fifteen months, he had moved up in weight to challenge bigger men. Each time, there was widespread doubt as to what the outcome would be. And each time, after the fight, it looked as though the result had been preordained.
“It’s not just about beating opponents,” former featherweight champion Barry McGuigan, now a television commentator, observed. “It’s the way that you beat them. Pacquiao went through Oscar De La Hoya like a sparring partner. The way he knocked out Ricky Hatton was staggering. He just pole-axed him. Then he systematically took apart Miguel Cotto in a way none could have predicted.”
Pacquiao’s journey from abject poverty in an impoverished land to iconic status and wealth beyond his imagination has captivated his followers. “The broad outlines of his legend,” Time Magazine declared, “have made him a projection of the migrant dreams of the many Filipinos who leave home and country for work. Some spend decades abroad for the sake of the ones they love. Everyone in the Philippines knows a person who has made the sacrifice or is making it. Pacquiao gives that multitude a champion’s face of selflessness; the winner who takes all and gives to all.”
The second promotional story-line revolved around Freddie Roach.
Roach turned pro at age eighteen and began his career with ten consecutive wins. After losing a decision, he ran his record to 26-and-1. The legendary Eddie Futch was his trainer.
“I look at old tapes of myself now,” Roach says, “and I know I could have been better. In the gym, I listened to what Eddie taught me and I could do it. But then the fight would come and I’d fight instead of box. I’d get hit and I had to hit back, which wasn’t always good. And I was stubborn. If something wasn’t working, instead of adjusting to something else, I’d keep trying the same thing. There’s a line between being courageous and being foolish. But when I was young, I was too aggressive to see it.”
There’s an old adage that says, if a fighter isn’t getting better, he’s getting worse. Roach peaked young. He was 13-and-12 after the age of twenty two. By the end of his career, he was an opponent. He retired at age twenty-six, never having made more than $7,500 for a fight.
“I remember when Eddie took me to his office and told me that I was taking too many punches and my performance wasn’t what it used to be and I should retire,” Roach says. “I started to cry. I had no idea what I was going to do with my life.”
Then life got tougher.
“Boxing,” Hugh McIlvanney has written, “is a sport in which two men try to batter each other senseless. No matter how you dress it up, the basic objective is to render the opponent unconscious. You can say that more people are killed in motorcycle racing, that more people are killed in mountaineering. But in neither of those two activities is the fundamental objective to knock the other guy out. Motive, not statistics, will always separate boxing from other sports.”
On the night of March 13, 2010, Manny Pacquiao readied for battle in the futuristic city known as Cowboys Stadium. The gate that divides the visiting team’s dressing room had been lowered, cutting the room in half. Eight “red corner” undercard fighters were on the other side of the gate. Pacquiao’s opponent and the “blue corner” fighters were in smaller quarters.
Pacquiao had arrived at the stadium at 7:50pm. The earliest he would be called to the ring was 10:00 o’clock. For the better part of an hour, he talked on his cell phone and sent text messages to friends. Then he readied for battle.
One day earlier, Manny had weighed in at 145-3/4 pounds. His opponent, Joshua Clottey, had tipped the scales at the maximum contract weight of 147. The assumption was that Clottey now weighed at least 160. Pacquiao weighed 150. His body was sculpted without an ounce of superfluous fat. It was hard to imagine that, less than two years before, he’d fought after weighing in at 130 pounds.
Football, like boxing, is a violent game. In this same dressing room, gridiron warriors had suited up for battle. Forty-five players on each team that confronted the Dallas Cowboys had donned rib protectors, shoulder pads, arm pads, knee pads, hip pads, thigh pads, and helmets with face-masks. When the competition began, they’d protected each other and helped teammates off the turf after they’d been knocked down.
Pacquiao would enter the ring for combat naked from the waist up. A protective cup to safeguard his genitals would be his only shield. There would be no one to block for him. His head would be completely exposed.
The rules of football are designed to minimize direct blows to the head. Boxing requires them.
Pacquiao knows that there’s a dark side to his trade. Before each fight, he asks the people closest to him to “pray for me.”
Two centuries ago, William Hazlitt wrote of the hour before a fight begins, “It is then the heart sickens as you think what the two champions are about and how a short time will determine their fate.”
As the clock ticked down, Pacquiao shadow-boxed, moving around the center of the room.
There were final instructions from trainer Freddie Roach.
Then it was time. Manny left the dressing room and walked through the subterranean depths of the stadium. A tunnel of humanity lined by Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders – sexual icons of our time – lay ahead. The inside of the stadium was bathed in a silver other-worldly glow. Spotlights moved back and forth. Fifty thousand fans were screaming.
A smile played across Pacquiao’s face. He seemed to be without fear. In many respects, this fight in this stadium was about the future of boxing. But boxing is timeless. The essence of the competition he was about to engage in was the same as John L. Sullivan experienced on a barge towed up-river to avoid New York law enforcement authorities in 1881. After the bell rang, it would be no different, really, from what Joe Louis and Max Schmeling did at Yankee Stadium or the encounter between Muhammad Ali and George Foreman in the heart of Africa. It was the same as the competition among unarmed combatants at the first Olympiad in Greece thousands of years ago. A boy who once fought on the streets of the Philippines for pocket change also knew it well.
*
2010 began with the collapse of the proposed mega-fight between Manny Pacquiao and Floyd Mayweather Jr. Then, on January 10th, Bob Arum (Pacquiao’s promoter) announced an alternative plan. Manny would fight Joshua Clottey of Ghana at Cowboys Stadium in Arlington, Texas.
Thereafter, Bart Barry observed, “We come to the end of our Pacquiao-Mayweather mourning season. Fun as it is to gnash teeth and tremble at the future of prizefighting, the sun has risen anew, men still don gloves to resolve conflicts in manly ways, and a major venue awaits a major event.”
Pacquiao-Clottey was for Pacquiao’s World Boxing Organization 147-pound championship. As expected, the World Boxing Council tried to get into the act. “Jose [WBC president Jose Sulaiman] wanted to sell me a diamond schmata [a Yiddish term for a raggedy piece of clothing],” Arum confided. “I told him I wasn’t interested. I paid the WBC US$41,000 for the belt we gave Manny after he beat Miguel Cotto. Enough is enough.”
Three themes were central to the promotion. The first, of course, was the persona of Manny Pacquiao.
Manny came to Dallas on fire, both as a fighter and as an attraction. Three times during the previous fifteen months, he had moved up in weight to challenge bigger men. Each time, there was widespread doubt as to what the outcome would be. And each time, after the fight, it looked as though the result had been preordained.
“It’s not just about beating opponents,” former featherweight champion Barry McGuigan, now a television commentator, observed. “It’s the way that you beat them. Pacquiao went through Oscar De La Hoya like a sparring partner. The way he knocked out Ricky Hatton was staggering. He just pole-axed him. Then he systematically took apart Miguel Cotto in a way none could have predicted.”
Pacquiao’s journey from abject poverty in an impoverished land to iconic status and wealth beyond his imagination has captivated his followers. “The broad outlines of his legend,” Time Magazine declared, “have made him a projection of the migrant dreams of the many Filipinos who leave home and country for work. Some spend decades abroad for the sake of the ones they love. Everyone in the Philippines knows a person who has made the sacrifice or is making it. Pacquiao gives that multitude a champion’s face of selflessness; the winner who takes all and gives to all.”
The second promotional story-line revolved around Freddie Roach.
Roach turned pro at age eighteen and began his career with ten consecutive wins. After losing a decision, he ran his record to 26-and-1. The legendary Eddie Futch was his trainer.
“I look at old tapes of myself now,” Roach says, “and I know I could have been better. In the gym, I listened to what Eddie taught me and I could do it. But then the fight would come and I’d fight instead of box. I’d get hit and I had to hit back, which wasn’t always good. And I was stubborn. If something wasn’t working, instead of adjusting to something else, I’d keep trying the same thing. There’s a line between being courageous and being foolish. But when I was young, I was too aggressive to see it.”
There’s an old adage that says, if a fighter isn’t getting better, he’s getting worse. Roach peaked young. He was 13-and-12 after the age of twenty two. By the end of his career, he was an opponent. He retired at age twenty-six, never having made more than $7,500 for a fight.
“I remember when Eddie took me to his office and told me that I was taking too many punches and my performance wasn’t what it used to be and I should retire,” Roach says. “I started to cry. I had no idea what I was going to do with my life.”
Then life got tougher.
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