By Norm Frauenheim-
LAS VEGAS – The smile never changes. It was there, forever young, all over again Friday as Manny Pacquiao looked into Adrien Broner’s bearded face and calculating eyes after both welterweights stood in front of each other for the face-to-face ritual that follows every weigh-in.
It’s still the smile that introduced Pacquiao to America. He’d walk to the ring, smiling like a kid headed to the playground. He’s 40 now. No kid, yet he’s still fighting to survive in a dangerous place he once ruled with punches and playfulness. He was happy to be there in those days. He’s happy to be there now.
The 29-year-old Broner promises – profanely, repeatedly and to anyone willing to listen – that Pacquiao has made a –mistake. Harm’s way — that canvas-covered turf surrounded by forbidding ropes – belongs to younger men with dangerous intentions still un-eroded by time. Broner’s youth and anger have sent a tone and a warning that middle-aged men belong on the safe side of those ropes behind a microphone or in a corner with a bucket.
Time moves on, and Broner (33-3-1, 24 KOs) insists that his will finally arrive Saturday night when he vows to upset Pacquiao (60-7-2, 39 KOs) at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in a Showtime pay-per-view bout (9 p.m. ET/6 pm PT).
“This one is for the ‘hood,’’ Broner said after weighing 146.5 pounds. Pacquiao was at 146, one pound lighter that the welterweight mandatory
Translation: It’s not for a Senator, which happens to be just one of Pacquiao’s many titles, including eight in eight weight classes and two in Filipino politics. Yet, Pacquiao, also a former Congressman and the WBA reigning 147-pound champion, hears it all and responds with that one enduring gesture. He smiles. There’s no mistaking Broner’s endless profanity and slurs. The words are meant to intimidate. Yet, no matter what Broner says, he always sees the same thing from Pacquiao. Broner must wonder: What in the (insert profanities and slurs here) is that (more profanities and slurs) thinking?
For this fight, at least, that Pacquiao smile is a psychological weapon. Broner is trying to elicit a response, yet all he gets are his own second thoughts about what he might be getting into against an aging fighter. A bad loss for Pacquiao might eliminate a much-talked-about rematch with Floyd Mayweather Jr., whose face and words figure all over the Showtime telecast. It also would eliminate a speculated with Errol Spence Jr. or Mikey Garcia, both of whom are lot more dangerous than Broner ever hopes to be. Spence and Garcia are set to fight on March 16.
But retirement only means Pacquiao moves on, finally and for good, into a stage of his life that includes fulltime politics and the Hall of Fame. For Broner, there’s more to lose, mostly because there not much else beyond another opening bell. Trouble with the law has been a constant for Broner. He is 1-1-1 over his last three bouts. Only the arrest warrants are outstanding.
Broner behaves like an angry man, raging at everything he doesn’t have and hasn’t won.
Pacquiao already has a lot, has won a lot and is poised to do more of both.
No wonder he still smiles.
