My Thoughts on Manny Pacquiao vs Joshua Clottey
by Tommy Long
This Saturday Manny Pacquiao and Joshua Clottey will face each other in a twelve round battle at Cowboys Stadium in Dallas Texas. The Pacquiao-Clottey fight is a reminder of why I love and why I hate boxing. I love boxing but top quality fights with big name fighters rarely happen anymore. Of course, even this great fight isn’t the fight we want. Every boxing fan has been salivating at the thought of Manny Pacquiao stepping in the ring to face arguably the best pound for pound fighter ever, Floyd “Money” Mayweather. Nevertheless, the two sides can’t come to an agreement and boxing fans are forced to wait through Joshua Clottey and a Floyd Mayweather-Sugar Shane Mosley matchup.
I love boxing, it was always part of me growing up, on the playground right after I would hit a bottom of the ninth grand slam to win the World Series and right before I would score the overtime winner in game 7 of the Stanley Cup finals, I would go twelve grueling rounds against Clubber Lang or Apollo Creed. The level of domination would vary but I would generally win via split decision, it was a reversal of Rocky’s fate in the first Rocky movie. On the weekends, I would sit with my dad and watch ABC’s Wide World of Sports; ABC would show top flight up and coming boxers, as well as Championship fight replays. I remember in 1985 watching Pernell Whitaker and Evander Holyfield fight their second pro-fights on ABC. In 1986, I remember watching a young Mike Tyson destroy Joe Frazier’s kid Marvis.
Boxing on television was great back then. Honestly, how many of you sit and watch ESPN’s Friday night fights it’s not the same. If I were a boxing promoter, I would offer quality fights on network TV at least once a month. We can see how free access to quality Mix Martial Arts fights has grown the UFC into a major Pay-Per-View player.
The cynic in me thinks that the Floyd Mayweather camp and the Manny Pacquiao camp didn’t intend to get a fight done before each had faced Clottey and Mosley. If we look at it from a purely business aspect, it makes sense. Pacquiao and Mayweather are the only two sure moneymakers in boxing right now, the Russian Heavyweights don’t have the drawing power of American fighters, Pacquiao from the Philippines has earn fans in the Latino community because of his heart and their shared heritage. The sooner Pacquiao and Mayweather get it on the sooner boxing will be left with nothing but a rematch to guarantee pay-per-view sales, if we fans are constantly tempted with the possible matchup, we’re more likely to pay attention and buy the fights leading up to the showdown.
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Even if boxing is leading me along, with the proverbial carrot on the stick, I’ll follow. When I watch boxing I don’t blink for 180 seconds at a time, it’s one of the few sports where if you blink you could miss the most amazing finish. In Saturday’s fight between Pacquiao and Clottey, we should expect an exciting finish. While Joshua Clottey has never been knocked out, PacMan has been on a destructive roll, with only five of his past 26 fights going to the cards. PacMan is a huge -700 favorite in this fight, if you want to and not many people have, you can put some money on Clottey +450 but an upset isn’t very likely.
I like Pacquiao to win this fight inside the distance, Bob Arum wouldn’t put him in against a fighter capable of killing the golden goose of a Pacquiao-Mayweather fight.
The trouble for boxing long term is that there aren’t any American fighters coming down the pipe that will capture the public’s imagination; during the Beijing Olympics, the Americans walked away with a single medal, Deontay Wilder’s lone bronze medal. In the 80’s the Olympic program was the primary feeding tube for professional boxing but with that drying up, we are forced to watch a fight between two big white guys with hairy backs and last names ending in ‘ov’.
Little kids don’t dream of boxing anymore, it could be that mom’s around the US are taking a stand and not letting their babies get in the ring, or it could be that without quality fights on free television, little kids aren't dreaming about winning that split decision against Apollo Creed or Clubber Lang.
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