By Bart Barry-
Saturday at MGM Grand in a fight for the vacant WBO International (better than domestic, less than world) Welterweight belt Filipino Manny Pacquiao will make the first last match of his career against California’s Timothy Bradley. It will be the third time the men meet and Pacquiao’s first fight since disappointing himself, pay-per-viewers and his entire country against Floyd Mayweather in May. Expectations are low.
And so we return to the unpleasantness, the badfaith, the malcontentment. This fight will be preyed upon by what abiding discontent aficionados feel towards Pacquiao, and after his performance in the Fight to Save boxing there’s no chance casual fans want a part of it.
Cynicism all round, then, and what else is new? It’s deeper and uglier this time.
Those casual fans who felt hoodwinked by Pacquiao’s performance 11 months ago and then rightly resented talk of his shoulder afterwards, persons inexperienced in the hucksterism of our beloved sport, persons who didn’t know every loser in every fight has a plethora of excuses – the dishonorable ones reading us their list; the honorable ones having their trainers do it – had no intention of buying the second fight of their lives Saturday, but Pacquiao’s comments against homosexual acts, well, those ignited the same persons to encourage a boycott.
It’s not a legacy or a revenues booster, but bless Pacquiao for holding his line frankly, for resisting the media bullying that now passes for awareness or enlightenment or openmindedness or whatever the next euphemism is for herd animals collectively rising on their hindlegs to whinny disapproval via social media, outstanding birthplace of antisocial behavior. Pacquiao’s comments were not new or in any way different from previous comments he’s made, and they were far more honest than whatever halfassed apologies came later and the corporate distancing his business partners foisted on us, hating the sin and the sinner unless some revenue might yet be milked from the sinner and then hating only the sin.
Once more the foil in all this is Timothy Bradley, decent, gracious, genuine, grateful, and wholly unmarketable. Someone somewhere probably hoped the folks so theatrically offended by Pacquiao’s unwavering commentary would rally behind a friendly black Californian, husband in a mixed marriage, father to biracial children, but no: Those who consider being offended an intellectual feat rally against things, not for them.
Bradley did his part to get the rubber match: he looked vulnerable against secondrate competition till hiring a famous trainer then looked unstoppable against secondrate competition. Teddy Atlas has failed a bit as a ham, though, hasn’t he? There was supposed to be a battle of wits between Teddy and Coach Freddie, an antagonism onto which novelty seekers might latch, but it hasn’t come off. Atlas, finally, takes himself and his profession too seriously to make mirthful with Coach Freddie. There is no American interest in the sport of boxing anymore either, which must be considered a hindrance of sorts.
Pacquiao has chosen for his farewell tilt a far superior opponent to the guy Money May used for his failure of a goodbye in the fall, but it’s hard to imagine that will save this. Bradley, after all, is the unsympathetic guy who robbed Pacman in 2012.
That was an enduring example of the way misanthropes rally against things and not for them. Tired as they were of cheering for Pacquiao a large number of folks decided to project their rage with life on Bradley, just about the least-deserving target of mass hatred prizefighting has produced in a generation. It took Bradley to show some of us what a large number of despicable people populate our ranks, and no we haven’t forgotten.
Coincidentally, this was not Pacquiao’s fault. He thought he won the first match with Bradley, even if he knew he didn’t win its predecessor, his third match with Juan Manuel Marquez, but he wasn’t fractionally animated in the post-Bradley-fight press conference as his promoter Bob Arum – realizing, as Arum did, this decision would cool talk of a Mayweather megamatch for years. We forget that now for a couple reasons, the largest of which being what a dreadful thing the Mayweather match was when it did happen.
The other reason: Marquez knocked Pacquiao stiff six months after Pacquiao was robbed by Bradley. Those of us who watched from ringside as Pacquiao was conclusively outboxed in the second half of his third fight with Marquez and then made to miss continually by Bradley were not surprised Marquez got him – even if every person at ringside was jolted by how decisively Marquez took Pacquiao’s consciousness – and even less surprised how hopelessly Pacquiao fought Mayweather 2 1/2 years later.
Apparently Pacquiao beat Bradley in their rematch – after mis-scoring their first fight I was seated too far from the ring to see the fighters as more than circling electrons in a microscope, and I didn’t care enough to watch the tape – which got Pacquiao a shot at Chris Algieri, which somehow got Pacquiao a shot at Floyd Mayweather, which again went the way every aficionado knew it would even while some boxing writers did their promotional best to envision ways Pacquiao might win.
One hopes Saturday’s match is competitive as it should be, raising Bradley’s next purse while sending Pacquiao into his first retirement with dignity. It can’t possibly be worse than his last fight.
I’ll take Pacquiao, SD-12, in a match Bradley wins by two rounds.
Bart Barry can be reached via Twitter @bartbarry
