By Bart Barry-
Saturday on Fox PPV in a match for the PBC’s emeritus welterweight championship at MGM Grand undefeated titlist Keith “One Time” Thurman got dropped and fairly decisioned by a 40-year-old Filipino senator, Manny Pacquiao, who struggled to call Thurman even “a good fighter” immediately afterwards. Not the always gracious Pacquiao’s fault, that. Different era, different priorities, different metrics.
No sooner does one imagine things going differently in Thurman’s career were he with different management than he recognizes different management overlooked him, didn’t it? If manager Al Haymon plucked fruit from the Olympic tree – some wellseeded like Errol, most misshapen like Rau’Shee and Terrell – he discovered Thurman differently, howsoever he did it, which is to write Haymon outbid the likes of Top Rank and affiliates, almost certainly because they didn’t bid at all.
Why is this relevant? Because at the time Thurman turned pro (nearly 12 years ago) most every great fighter a young aficionado today can name got developed by Top Rank, starting with “Pretty Boy” Floyd Mayweather, the patron saint, emphasis on patron, of today’s PBC stable.
Whither this rehashing? It crossed my mind muchly during Saturday’s match, as it certainly crossed Coach Freddie’s mind and “Money” Mayweather’s mind, too, at ringside. Accustomed to what large-pursed, pillow-gloved, athletic-contest exhibitions PBC bubblewraps its champions in, Thurman hadn’t an inkling what suffering must traditionally be endured for a man to call himself champion. He knows about it now, though.
Over and again one marveled at how alien a figure Pacquiao cut on the sanitized island called Premier Boxing Champions. Like an aged tiger parachuted in the middle of a clover sheep farm populated only by sheep and clover, Pacquiao, red of tooth and claw, fists wrapped in Mexican horsehair, not foam, thrilled at violence as his profession’s only point – not an ancillary unpleasantness to be got through while doing fitnessy things for large paychecks.
Three times the absurdity of it all manifested on Thurman’s face: When Pacquiao knocked him asswards, when Pacquiao mashed his nose through his face, when Pacquiao touched him properly on the button. First was the look of disbelief then the look of disgusted betrayal then the look of offended fright. Thurman collected a righthand and dropped like he’d been tripped then he spit the yucky taste of his own blood at his corner en route to his stool then he wheeled away, gumshield in glove, selling a Pacquiao bodyshot like the foulest of things. The last was the caketaker; it was the act of a man unable to imagine in his 30th prizefight such pain might be delivered by a legal blow.
And all this from a version of Pacquiao five years past its expiration date, a version of Pacquiao unable or unwilling to contest more than 45 seconds of a round, a version of Pacquiao much more an ideal of selfdefense than a predator.
There was Thurman, chastened completely by getting bluematted in round 1, tentatively pawing and countering through much of the match, while Fox’s contracted narrative-maker tabulated hundreds of “power punches”, knowing there was a needle he must thread: Hit Pacquiao enough to score points but not so much as to make him mad.
Then in your mind flashed Juan Manuel Marquez, sucking his own noseblood through an open mouth and goading, prodding, goading, goading, prodding, goading Pacquiao till he lured him, after 125 minutes and 58 seconds of misery and conflict and fear, in the master’s trap to end his era in ecstasy. How even do you word such a contrast between the sinewy savage Pacquaio faced Dec. 8, 2012, and the fatted sheep he’s seen in 2019? They are not sportsmen of the same species, surely.
O, be not so hard on gentleman Keith; after all, he comported himself nobly in defeat and gives generous interviews and he’s telegenic and loves his wife. Fair points, yes. If you are going to lose there are more ignoble ways of doing it, as Adrien Broner reminds us annually.
O, to hell with that. This is bloodsport, this is men making their livings hurting other men.
Pacquiao just reset the hands on the clock of PBC’s fraud. Don’t let Pacquiao’s reluctance to face Errol Spence blind you. Spence is an outlier – PBC doesn’t know what to do with him either. Thurman was PBC’s champion, Thurman won the PBC welterweight Super Bowl in 2017, two months before PBC even knew what it had in Spence, Thurman was the coddled prodigy, Thurman represented PBC’s post-Mayweather future. And that future just spent round 10 with his white tail in the air, skittering away from a 40-year-old.
Because decisioning Thurman this late in the day marks only about the 27th best moment of Pacquaio’s career, Saturday was not about Pacquiao. Saturday was a fullthroated indictment of the P in PBC.
Be glad “The Truth” was ringside to see it, too, for the future of our beloved sport. Now Spence knows, as Mayweather knew, the PBC on FoxTime belt is a participation trophy, the glassencased product of a minorleague affiliate, a way to bamboozle venture capitalists and network programmers. Spence now knows if he doesn’t make his manager make a match with Terence Crawford while both men are still prime Spence’s championship lineage will run through “One Time” and “Swift”, not “Sugar” or “Sugar”, and a halfdecade from now some young bodysnatcher will properly coin him “The Fiction” like Spence properly coined another man “Sometimes”. Bart Barry can be reached via Twitter @bartbarry
