PACQUIAO’S CHANCE TO RELAX A BIT IN MOSLEY

SOURCE: Maloney L. Samaco

This is it! This is the fight which I posted in PhilBoxing last November 21, 2010, calling it a boring fight. The world’s top fighter in all divisions, facing a boxer way past his prime, come May 7, 2011.

Manny has been facing opponents much bigger than him, with the likes of Oscar de la Hoya, Miguel Angel Cotto, Joshua Clottey, and lately the most gigantic of them all, Antonio Margarito.

Pacquiao has fought these foes against all odds. He brawled against the Golden Boy whom many believed as a tough opponent due to his size and experience. He dominated de la Hoya and showed humanity that a fighting Filipino is worthy to be on top of the world.

Pacquiao also stopped Cotto by a TKO which satisfied his fans all over the world. But the fight with Cotto was not a feast day for Pacman as Cotto proved to be a warrior by heart and was not an easy foe to deal with.

All Clottey had to do was to protect his face and his body from the blows of Pacquiao and the African fought not to win but not to loss by KO. It was one lesser opponent and a tune up for the next tougher rival in Margarito.

The Mexican warrior is a combatant by heart and by deeds. His size and strength proved to be a superior weapon against the Pacman arsenal. Though winning by a unanimous decision, Pacquiao failed to knock the Tijuana Tornado down, and the Mexican finished twelve rounds with face badly swollen.

Through Bob Arum’s stroke, Mosley was given the chance to face the pound-for-pound king, even at the dusk of his boxing career at 39. Yes, it will be a boring fight and Mosley has nothing to lose and every million dollar to gain. The fight was all for the help of Mosley, allegedly in a tight financial fix.

But it could also serve as a tune up fight for the next bigger encounters and the subsequent tougher opponents, against Juan Manuel Marquez, Andre Berto, or if he finally comes out of his shell, Floyd Mayweather, Jr.

Pacquiao has no pressure fighting Mosley and could gain millions of dollars against the popular African-American who could still be a box-office hit despite his age.

The fighting congressman has so many duties to do and so many responsibilities to look into after missing sessions due to his training for Margarito. Being a national legislator is not an easy task and he will be even further pressured if he has to face immediately a big name opponent after a tough fight.

Pacquiao has to relax a bit in facing a slower Mosley as a training or practice fight for a bigger payday against more established rivals – Marquez, Berto or Mayweather.

Even a man of steel needs to calm down.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to all!

With ‘Pacman-Money’ out, fans turn to Wahlberg

SOURCE: INQUIRER

NEW YORK—Thousands of movie-goers filled theaters across the country last weekend to see Mark Wahlberg’s stirring portrayal of Micky Ward in “The Fighter.”

The film about the hard-scrabble Boston-area boxer raked in more than $12 million its first full weekend, has been nominated for six Golden Globes and figures to be an Oscar darling when nominations are announced next month. Wahlberg and co-star Christian Bale even graced the cover of Sports Illustrated, which trumpeted the film as an instant classic.

The sport itself only wishes it could get the same kind of publicity.

While boxing remains one of the great storytelling backdrops, with its inherent drama and truthful cliches about long odds and overcoming adversity, the sport continues to suffer. Empty seats greeted fighters stepping into the ring in 2010, and the one fight that many hoped would generate some verve—Manny Pacquiao against Floyd Mayweather Jr.—still hasn’t happened.

It creates this seemingly incongruous juxtaposition: Boxing has never been more popular on the big screen, and perhaps never less popular in real life.

“You’ve got a couple things happening, you’ve got mixed martial arts and you’ve got no great heavyweight champion.

You’re going to need great boxers to bring people back to the sport,” said Wahlberg, who first met Ward about two decades ago and has spent plenty of time with him at Arthur Ramalho’s unpretentious West End Gym in Lowell, Mass.

“My thing is, every boxer that I’ve ever met has a story worth telling on the big screen or a book or television,” Wahlberg said. “It takes a very special individual to choose boxing as a career, and usually the sport chooses them anyway, not having any alternatives.”

Perhaps that is why boxing has been a formula for cinematic success.

Martin Scorsese’s epic “Raging Bull,” which landed Robert DeNiro the Academy Award for best actor in 1981, is still considered a masterpiece. “Cinderella Man” got three Oscar nominations in 2006, two years after “Million Dollar Baby” nabbed golden statuettes for best picture, best director (Clint Eastwood), best actress (Hilary Swank) and supporting actor (Morgan Freeman).

Then there’s the film that started it all, the original “Rocky,” which took home two Oscars in 1976 and is still spawning sequels.

“The two things that brought boxing back to the forefront with the public was the great success of the 1976 Olympic team and when Sylvester Stallone gave us our heavyweight champion, Rocky Balboa,” Hall of Fame trainer Emanuel Steward said.

It helped the sport experience a short-lived renaissance in the 1970s and ’80s, though the steady stream of folks who walked from movie theaters straight into arenas ran dry years ago.

Exorbitant ticket prices during a poor economy, squabbling among promoters, out-of-control sanctioning bodies and few identifiable stars have crippled attendance, especially in the United States. When Pacquiao fought Antonio Margarito at Cowboys Stadium last month, the 41,734 paid patrons were less than what promoters and team owner Jerry Jones had hoped.

Bob Arum, who has been promoting fights for more than four decades, was optimistic that 30,000 fans would come to see Miguel Cotto face Yuri Foreman in June. The first fight at the new Yankee Stadium instead drew just over 20,000 to the grand ballpark in the Bronx.

Both of those events had major attractions—Pacquiao, boxing’s biggest star, and Cotto, wildly popular in New York—along with novel venues. But when those ingredients were missing, even fewer fans were turning the turnstiles.

Sergio Martinez’s stunning one-punch knockout of Paul Williams in a middleweight title fight was witnessed by 5,502 fans at Atlantic City’s Boardwalk Hall. In Las Vegas, the self-proclaimed “Fight Town,” junior welterweight champion Amir Khan and Marcos Maidana drew 4,632 people.

"This is not an easy fight" - Pacquiao

Pacquiao not taking fight against Mosley lightly

SOURCE: INQUIRER

GENERAL SANTOS CITY—Pound-for-pound king Manny Pacquiao is not taking American boxer Shane Mosley lightly.

Pacquiao said Mosley has the speed and experience and he needs to train hard for their May 7 fight at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nevada.

n stressing how a good fighter Mosley is, Pacquiao said he was made to choose two different dates for the Mosley tiff, April 16 or May 7.

“I chose May 7 so I have more than enough time to prepare,” he said.

“This is not an easy fight. I need at least eight weeks to train for the Mosley fight,” Pacquiao said.

As to where the eight-week training will be conducted, Pacquiao said he has yet to speak to his coach, Freddie Roach after the holidays.

Roach has also said in several interviews that Mosley will be a tough opponent and hopes to train the Filipino ring icon for a longer period this time around.

But he added he will start “some light training” already after his long vacation.

Pacquiao was interviewed on Thursday in General Santos before his whole family flew to Boracay, where they spent Christmas.

They will stay in Boracay for a week. Afterward, the whole family will fly to Japan for a week-long vacation, then to Australia for another week-long trip.

The whole family left the city around 11 a.m. Thursday aboard a private plane for their extended foreign trips.

“We need to take a longer vacation to make the kids happy. Their father had been busy for the past months, pero sulit kasi medyo mahaba ang bakasyon namin kasama siya (but it’s worth it because now we get to spend a long time with him),” Jinkee, Pacquiao’s wife, said.