By Bart Barry-
Saturday on Fox Sports pay-per-view Keith “One Time” Thurman defends his WBA “Super World” welterweight title against Filipino legend Manny Pacquiao in a Las Vegas match with world’s-third-best-welterweight ramifications. That is, whoever wins Saturday will almost certainly deserve a higher ranking than whoever next loses to Errol Spence or Terence Crawford.
When last we saw Pacquiao he was paddlepurpling About Billions Broner en route to a dull pay-extra-to-view decisioning of boxing’s clown pauper, a man whose schtick in the ring and otherwise has gone wanting since. Pacquiao has that effect when he’s right. He delights, sells tickets, makes lots of money and wins easily without employing any of the brandbuilding antics his PBC stablemates require. If he hasn’t made quite Floyd Mayweather’s career earnings he’s come exponents closer than his stablemates, without having to reinvent himself nearly so often. There has been no one like him since his debut in 1995, and that phrase may hold-up still in the year 2050.
Pacquiao went to PBC because promoter Top Rank ran out of highpaying b-fighters to feed him; if Pacquiao didn’t blame his former promoter for the decision that befell him Down Under two years ago, he didn’t forgive the outfit either. He forewent what desperate warnings Bob Arum surely imparted and handicapped properly the other side of the dial: Yes, PBC on FoxTime has Errol Spence to swerve someday but not till I’ve touched that crew for tens of millions of dollars in peril-less sparrings.
By all accounts Pacquiao is way smarter than the berry-appy mascot he plays in prefight previews and postfight pressers; if he didn’t tell PBC to start heavypursing him with Broner it’s simply because he didn’t have to – his new promoter was benighted enough to think Broner might have him. Time to ringup Thurman next, and after that, win or lose or draw, do a cashout dance with Spence, who’s likely to get softened harder by the tactically limited but physically expressive Shawn Porter than Mikey Garcia’d’ve done him in 100 rounds.
All of this assumes Thurman hasn’t the punch or malice to end Pacquiao’s career Saturday. Five years ago, assumptions might’ve been different. Thurman looked to have skills and temperament enough to bend the next era his way. Boy, was that a long time ago.
Six years in the past Thurman looked awesome in San Antonio, twice, and whetted aficionados’ imaginations. Then he effectively took 2014 off. Then he couldn’t ice little Robert Guerrero at the beginning of 2015, which was a problem. Four months later Thurman collected the WBA’s welterweight belt by giving Luis Collazo his seventh career L, and that was that. He squeaked past Shawn Porter in 2016, squeaked past Danny Garcia in 2017, honeymooned and ashrammed in 2018, and squeaked past little Josesito (Little Jose) Lopez in January. It has been a primesquandering historic for One Time.
But now Thurman takes dead aim at an eighth L on Pacquiao’s resume, a feat for which he’ll garner little praise from aficionados but lots of hyperbole from PBC propogandists and a fat check to cash.
“It’s called prizefighting, dummy” – as Money Mayweather once told Shane Mosley. Thurman gets that in a way generations of prizefighters before him did not. Get the cash and get out, posterity be damned. As a fellow man, few among us could blame him. As customers, of course, we’re entitled to an alternative view: If Thurman wants to make his living nonviolently, he can open a yoga studio, something more befitting his recent mien.
But he’d better not plan to play boxing with Pacquiao. Probably Manny will play boxing back with him, doing something that complements the 60-seconds-per-round workrate Pacquiao has perfected since Juan Manuel Marquez showed him absolute darkness interrupted by a single warm light, but maybe not. Pacquiao knew no exertion was worth extra for icing Broner – if Pacquiao even knew who Broner was before their match. But Thurman is PBC’s welterweight champion emeritus, and snatching Thurman’s 0 should mark at least the 30th-greatest accomplishment of Pacquaio’s career, even if it doesn’t crack his Top 25.
Would stretching Pacquiao 6 1/2 years after Marquez did it mark the highlight of Thurman’s career? Yup. Thurman has never shared a ring with anyone whose greatness is the square root of Pacquaio’s.
More than halfway in his 41st year, Pacquiao hasn’t the reflexes he had while racing through prime Mexican legends 14 or 15 years ago, but he recognizes patterns better than he did back then for having seen so many of them so craftily presented. Stylistically, Thurman is bargain-basement-basic beside Erik Morales or Miguel Cotto, much less the aforementioned Mosley, Mayweather or Marquez. Worse yet, Thurman ain’t that much younger than Pacquiao, and if his reflexes haven’t atrophied with age they’ve certainly rusted with inactivity.
Thurman hasn’t the derringdo to make war on Pacquiao, we know, but he has the tools to keepaway his way to a sympathetic decision, and that’s what he’s best suited to do. Thurman probably has pop enough to put Pacquiao in easymoney mode, the way Mayweather did, but Pacquiao won’t believe that till he feels it, which means Thurman may have to fight Pacquiao off him at some point, a point likely to represent the match’s only entertaining half-round – at the midway point of its fifth or sixth. After that, expect drama and suspense to leak gradually from the ring, punctuated by a forget-me-not flurry in the final 30 seconds of the 12th round.
A week from today, we’ll read Pacquiao has nothing left to prove and ought retire and Thurman has so much left to prove and ought use this narrow victory to springboard his way in a ring with Spence or Bud Crawford. Next year, we’ll read about Pacquiao negotiating a farewell war with Spence or Bud Crawford while Thurman demands a rematch with Lopez or Garcia.
This Saturday, anyway, I’ll take Thurman, MD-12, in a close, dull match one Vegas judge has already scored 117-111 for One Time.
Bart Barry can be reached via Twitter @bartbarry
