Pacquiao vs. Mayweather: Who’s the Best of the Era?

Published

11 years ago

October 21, 2013

Al Bernstein knows more about boxing than me. To be totally fair to him, it’s probably safe to say the recently inducted Hall of Famer has actually forgotten more about boxing at this point in his storied career than I know in total.

Bernstein has done it all as a boxing media member, and he’s done it well. He started as a newspaperman in the 1970s. Soon, he was contributing to Boxing Illustrated and RING Magazine. From 1980 to 1998, he was analyst and host of ESPN’s Top Rank Boxing show. In fact, from 1980 to 2003, Bernstein was the primary voice of boxing for ESPN. And, as you well know, since 2003 Bernstein has been lead boxing analyst for Showtime. He’s also the primary face and leader of our sister site, Boxing Channel.

Like I said, he’s done it all.

One of his signature shows over at ESPN was the Big Fights Boxing Hour. He wrote and hosted 26 episodes of the program, which chronicled some of the biggest fights in boxing history. Honestly, my first encounter with many of the finer points of boxing history came through watching these shows, where old-time masters like Sugar Ray Robinson and Jack Dempsey came to life again through the magic of film.

So when I chatted with Bernstein recently, I couldn’t help but ask him to compare legacies between the two preeminent fighters of this era, Floyd Mayweather and Manny Pacquiao. Who is the greatest of this era, as of today? If I’m honest with myself, I was probably hoping Bernstein would validate my opinion on the matter: Mayweather is an all-time great, but Pacquiao is an all-time greater.

Look, I’m not saying Pacquiao (seen running stairs in Beijing with Brandon Rios, in Chris Farina-Top Rank snap) would’ve beaten Mayweather at welterweight back when the fight should’ve happened around 2009-10. (I’m not not saying it either). But I submit to you, dear reader, that Pacquiao’s wins, both the men he fought and when he fought them, measure slightly better than Mayweather’s grand accomplishment of staying undefeated.

Sure, it’s close. But Pacquiao’s three best wins before he moved up to welterweight (Barrera, Morales and Marquez) are better than any one win Mayweather has enjoyed over his entire career. Right?

And his losses? Give me the fighter who tests himself over the one that doesn’t. I want to see a fighter go beyond his limits, and when he reaches them and gets knocked to the ground, I want to see if he can get back up again.

But what does Bernstein say on the matter? First, I asked him about the fight that never got made. What would a Manny Pacquiao vs. Floyd Mayweather Superfight have looked like back in 2009?

“That would’ve been fun,” Bernstein said. “I always thought that version of Manny Pacquiao had a chance to do rather well against Mayweather. I mean, I may have been wrong based on what has transpired since, but I always thought that the fight would have been really interesting during that time period because of the speed and activity of Pacquiao. That was an A level fighter in Manny Pacquiao who had confidence that was skyrocketing and all the rest of it.”

So Pacquiao is on the same level as Mayweather at welterweight? Among the greatest of the greats?

“Now at those weight divisions, [Pacquiao] is not a Ray Leonard or a Tommy Hearns or a Roberto Duran. Down at featherweight, around those areas, to me he is one of the biggest superstars of all-time along with Barrera, Marquez and Morales. He’s not [quite at that level] at the higher weights, but still terrific.”

Bernstein doesn’t consider Pacquiao an all-time great welterweight, but gives high praise to the Pacquiao of lower divisions.

“Pacquiao had two different careers. The first one was with all those great fighters when they created what I consider to be a mini-version of the 1980s thing of the Four Kings [Hearns, Hagler, Duran and Leonard]. He ended up having the best record of that whole crew, so you have to give him his props. At the end of the day, he was the best of that group probably by a narrow margin.”

Still, Bernstein doesn’t seem quite ready to jump on the Pacquiao train, so I push the issue. Don’t you have to judge Pacquiao’s career a bit differently? I mean, head-to-head is one thing, but don’t you have to judge Pacquiao’s legacy at the lighter weights and Mayweather’s at the heavier? And doesn’t what Pacquiao accomplished later in his career bolster his case of being best of the era?

“When he moved up in weight, he had some amazing performances. But with Mayweather, because he’s still winning and winning convincingly…you have to take the whole body of work. Mayweather’s had these long layoffs and all the rest, so he’s managed his body better in a lot of ways…but at the end of the day, it doesn’t matter. Mayweather’s beaten everybody. Now, were there times when you’d have liked to see him fight Fighter A instead of Fighter B? Definitely. And were there a couple of people that he used what I like to call the Angelo Dundee theory of management of trying to get everyone at exactly the right time? Yes. He did all that. But at the end of the day, he’s going to have glittery names on his resume. Isn’t he?”

It’s true. Mayweather does have a bevy of big names on his unblemished record. De La Hoya, Hatton, Marquez, Mosley, and Cotto are nothing to scoff at. Moreover, he’s just about dominated every single one of them. His wins might not carry watchers to the peak of excitement the way a fighter like Pacquiao does, but Mayweather is the sweetest scientist of his day. In fact, Bernstein argues that Mayweather is so good at what he does, he fools the audience into thinking he’s not standing right in front of his opponents for most of the fight.

“When you dissect a Mayweather fight, when you go back and look at it, he spends a lot of time in the pocket. It’s not as if he’s dancing the whole time. He will move strategically when he wants to, and what he does, if you look at it, his plan is always the same: He might give a round or two early…and then he wins all those rounds in the middle. He does it not by moving, but by landing punches, by slipping, by doing all the things he does and letting the guy know: ‘look, you’re in here, but you’re not going to hit me as much as you want.’ Then, in the later rounds, he’ll employ a little more movement. It’s not running, but employing more movement. Because now…he’s banked a lot of rounds and he now feels like he can peck away and win the rounds he needs to win at the end. So it gives the illusion of how he ran when in reality he didn’t. That’s the part that fascinates me.”

Bernstein said part of the problem is that Mayweather, 36, has never had to face a truly great fighter in his prime. So the entertainment value of a Mayweather fight is reduced to simply witnessing how much better he is than the person standing in front of him. And while Pacquiao had great rivals in the prime of his career, men who tested his limits, fans have missed out on seeing how Mayweather would react facing the same thing.

Bernstein has a point. In 2012, when Miguel Cotto had the audacity to bloody Mayweather’s nose with a steady and stiff jab, for fans it was as if Gatti-Ward was unfolding right in front of their eyes. The excitement was downright palpable, despite the fight being a clear and wide UD win for Mayweather. Why? Because Mayweather so seldom looks as if he’s actually in a fight.

“That’s why, to be honest, sometimes he’s doing great but also it’s the level of opposition. We don’t have a superstar in this era [for him to fight]. We have a lot of terrific fighters, Canelo among them. They’re very good at their craft and fun to watch. We don’t have another A-plus level fighter in those weight divisions. If we had an Andre Ward down there, or someone like that, then it would probably be a great matchup. If we had a Tommy Hearns and a Sugar Ray Leonard or a Roberto Duran or an Aaron Pryor – if we had some of those people, we’d have a better chance of seeing the match we want to have with Mayweather.”

Last month, we were hoping Canelo Alvarez would help give us exactly that. Yet, while the 23-year-old appeared to have all the tools necessary to give Mayweather a stern test, the 12-round bout devolved into that of just about any other Mayweather fight: absolute dominance.

“I thought Canelo squandered his moment in time by fighting the wrong tactical fight,” Bernstein said. “I don’t know if he’d have done any better, but why he did that, I have no idea.”

Still, Bernstein said the stage for the fight, which he called from ringside for Showtime, was up there with any big fight in boxing history.

“That one was right up there with any of them. The level of excitement leading up to it, that weigh-in scene where they open up the entire arena and I couldn’t hear a word Brian Kenny was saying and I had to read his lips because of the noise…it was pretty extraordinary. And because the mainstream sports media covered it, it added another dimension to it, too. The whole event was as exciting as the great fights in the 80s I worked on featuring Hearns, Hagler, Leonard and Duran. Now, that was a different time. There was no social media and the immediacy of coverage, but still those were huge events and spectacular…this one was right at the top of the list.”

It seems Bernstein can’t say enough good things about Mayweather.

“He’s remarkable. He’s 36 years old, pushing 37, and you could never imagine somebody fighting this precisely, this well and this athletically at that age.”

Still, though, all this talk about the Four Kings…these guys were all great, and they all fought each other to prove both to themselves and to the world, which man was the greatest of the era. Isn’t this whole issue, the legacies of Floyd Mayweather and Manny Pacquiao, something that could’ve and should’ve been settled in the ring back when it might have been the biggest fight in boxing history? Didn’t Pacquiao, the version that butchered Ricky Hatton and tossed Miguel Cotto around the ring like a ragdoll…didn’t he stand the best chance of knocking Mayweather off his throne?

“We would have liked to find out,” said Bernstein, and in the end, it appears we at least agree on that.

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Kelsey McCarson

Mizuki Hiruta Dominates in her U.S. Debut and Omar Trinidad Wins Too at Commerce

Published

10 hours ago

January 18, 2025

David A. Avila

Mizuki-Hiruta-Dominates-in-her-U.S.-Debut-and-Trinidad-Wins-Too-at-Commerce

Japan’s Mizuki Hiruta smashed through Mexico’s Maribel Ramirez with ease in winning by technical decision and local hero Omar Trinidad continued his assault on the featherweight division on Friday.

Hiruta (7-0, 2 KOs), who prefers to be called “Mimi,” made her American debut with an impressive performance against Mexican veteran Maribel Ramirez (15-11-4) and retained the WBO super flyweight world title by unanimous decision at Commerce Casino in Commerce, Calif.

The pink-haired Japanese southpaw champion quickly proved to be quicker, stronger and even better than advertised. In the opening round Ramirez landed on the floor twice after throwing errant blows. On one instance, it could have been ruled a knockdown but it was not a convincing blow.

In the second round, Ramirez again attacked and again was met with a Hiruta check right hook and down went the Mexican. This time referee Ray Corona gave the eight-count and the fight resumed.

It was Hiruta’s third title defense but this time it was on American soil. She seemed nervous by the prospect of getting a favorable review from the more than 700 fans inside the casino tent.

For more than a year Hiruta has been training off and on with Manny Robles in the L.A. area. Now that she has a visa, she has spent considerable time this year learning the tricks of the trade. They proved explosively effective.

Though Mexico City’s Ramirez has considerable experience against world champions, she discovered that Hiruta was not easy to hit. Often, the Japanese champion would slip and counter with precision.

It was an impressive American debut, though the fight was stopped in the eighth round after a collision of heads. The scores were tallied and all three saw Hiruta the winner by scores of 80-71 twice and 79-72.

“I’m so happy. I could have done much more,” said Hiruta through interpreter Yuriko Miyata. “I wanted to do more things that Manny Robles taught me.”

Trinidad Wins Too

Omar Trinidad (18-0-1, 13 KOs) discovered that challenger Mike Plania (31-5, 18 KOs) has a very good chin and staying power. But over 10 rounds Trinidad proved to be too fast and too busy for the Filipino challenger.

Immediately it was evident that the East L.A. featherweight was too quick and too busy for Plania who preferred a counter-puncher attack that never worked.

“He was strong,” said Trinidad. “He took everything.”

After 10 redundant rounds all three judges scored for Trinidad 100-90 twice and 99-91. He retains the WBC Continental Americas title.

Other Bouts

Ali Akhmedov (23-1, 17 KOs) blasted out Malcolm Jones (17-5-1) in less than two rounds. A dozen punches by Akhmedov forced referee Thomas Taylor to stop the super middleweight fight.

Iyana “Roxy” Verduzco (3-0) bloodied Lindsey Ellis in the first round and continued the speedy assault in the next two rounds. Referee Ray Corona saw enough and stopped the fight in favor of Verduzco at 1:34 of the third round.

Gloria Munguilla (7-1) and Brook Sibrian (5-2) lit up the boxing ring with a nonstop clash for eight rounds in their light flyweight fight. Munguilla proved effective with a slip-and-counter attack. Sibrian adjusted and made the fight closer in the last four rounds but all three judges favored Munguilla.

More Winners

Joshua Anton, Tayden Beltran, Adan Palma, and Alexander Gueche all won their bouts.

Photos credit: Al Applerose

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Avila Perspective, Chap. 309: 360 Promotions Opens with Trinidad, Mizuki and More

Published

2 days ago

January 16, 2025

David A. Avila

Avila Perspective, Chap. 309: 360 Promotions Opens with Trinidad, Mizuki and More

Best wishes to the survivors of the Los Angeles wildfires that took place last week and are still ongoing in small locales.

Most of the heavy damage took place in the western part of L.A. near the ocean due to Santa Ana winds. Another very hot spot was in Altadena just north of the Rose Bowl. It was a horrific tragedy.

Hopefully the worst is over.

Pro boxing returns with 360 Boxing Promotions spotlighting East L.A.’s Omar Trinidad (17-0-1, 13 KOs) defending a regional featherweight title against Mike Plania (31-4, 18 KOs) on Friday, Jan. 17, at the Commerce Casino in Commerce, Calif.

“I’m the king of L.A. boxing and I’ll be ready to put on a show headlining again in the main event. This is my year, I’m ready to challenge and defeat any of the featherweight world champions,” said Trinidad.

UFC Fight Pass will stream the Hollywood Night fight card that includes a female world championship fight and other intriguing match-ups.

Tom Loeffler heads 360 Promotions and once again comes full force with a hot prospect in Trinidad. If you’re not familiar with Loeffler’s history of success, he introduced America to Oleksandr Usyk, Gennady “GGG” Golovkin and the brothers Wladimir and Vitaly Kltischko.

“We’ve got a wealth of international talent and local favorites to kick off our 2025 in grand style,” said Loeffler.

He knows talent.

Trinidad hails from the Boyle Heights area of East L.A. near the Los Angeles riverbed. Several fighters from the past came from that exact area including the first Golden Boy, Art Aragon.

Aragon was a huge gate attraction during the late 1940s until 1960. He was known as a lady’s man and dated several Hollywood starlets in his time. Though he never won a world title he did fight world champions Carmen Basilio, Jimmy Carter and Lauro Salas. He was more or less the king of the Olympic Auditorium and Los Angeles boxing during his career.

Other famous boxers from the Boyle Heights area were notorious gangster Mickey Cohen and former world champion Joey Olivo.

Can Trinidad reach world title status?

Facing Trinidad will be Filipino fighter Plania who’s knocked off a couple of prospects during his career including Joshua “Don’t Blink” Greer and Giovanni Gutierrez. The fighter from General Santos in the Philippines can crack and hold his own in the boxing ring.

It’s a very strong fight card and includes WBO world titlist Mizuki Hiruta of Japan who defends the super flyweight title against Mexican veteran Maribel Ramirez. It’s a tough matchup for Hiruta who makes her American debut. You can’t miss her with that pink hair and she has all the physical tools to make a splash in this country.

Mizukii Hiruta

Two other female bouts are also planned, including light flyweight banger L.A.’s Gloria Munguilla (6-1) against Coachella’s Brook Sibrian (5-1) in a match set for six rounds. Both are talented fighters. Another female fight includes super featherweights Iyana “Right Hook Roxy” Verduzco (2-0) versus Lindsey Ellis (2-1) in another six-rounder. Ellis can crack with all her wins coming via knockout. Verduzco is a multi-national titlist as an amateur.

Others scheduled to perform are Ali Akhmedov, Joshua Anton, Adan Palma and more.

Doors open at 4:30 p.m.

Boxing and the Media

The sport of professional boxing is currently in flux. It’s always in flux but no matter what people may say or write, boxing will survive.

Whether you like Jake Paul or not, he proved boxing has worldwide appeal with monstrous success in his last show. He has media companies looking at the numbers and imagining what they can do with the sport.

Sure, UFC is negotiating a massive billion dollar deal with media companies, as is WWE, both are very similar in that they provide combat entertainment. You don’t need to know the champions because they really don’t matter. Its about the attractions.

Boxing is different. The good champions last and build a following that endures even beyond their careers a la Mike Tyson.

MMA can’t provide that longevity, but it does provide entertainment.

Currently, there is talk of establishing a boxing league again. It’s been done over and over but we shall see if it sticks this time.

Pro boxing is the true warrior’s path and that means a solo adventure. It’s a one-on-one sport and that appeals to people everywhere. It’s the oldest sport that can be traced to prehistoric times. You don’t need classes in Brazilian Jiujitsu, judo, kick boxing or wrestling. Just show up in a boxing gym and they can put you to work.

It’s a poor person’s path that can lead to better things and most importantly discipline.

Photos credit: Lina Baker

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Boxing Trainer Bob Santos Paid his Dues and is Reaping the Rewards

Published

3 days ago

January 15, 2025

Arne K. Lang

Boxing-Trainer-Bob-Santos-Paid-his-Dues-and-is-Reaping the Rewards

Bob Santos, the 2022 Sports Illustrated and The Ring magazine Trainer of the Year, is a busy fellow. On Feb. 1, fighters under his tutelage will open and close the show on the four-bout main portion of the Prime Video PPV event at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas. Jeison Rosario continues his comeback in the lid-lifter, opposing Jesus Ramos. In the finale, former Cuban amateur standout David Morrell will attempt to saddle David Benavidez with his first defeat. Both combatants in the main event have been chasing 168-pound kingpin Canelo Alvarez, but this bout will be contested for a piece of the light heavyweight title.

When the show is over, Santos will barely have time to exhale. Before the month is over, one will likely find him working the corner of Dainier Pero, Brian Mendoza, Elijah Garcia, and perhaps others.

Benavidez (29-0, 24 KOs) turned 28 last month. He is in the prime of his career. However, a lot of folk rate Morrell (11-0, 9 KOs) a very live dog. At last look, Benavidez was a consensus 7/4 (minus-175) favorite, a price that betokens a very competitive fight.

Bob Santos, needless to say, is confident that his guy can upset the odds. “I have worked with both,” he says. “It’s a tough fight for David Morrell, but he has more ways to victory because he’s less one-dimensional. He can go forward or fight going back and his foot speed is superior.”

Benavidez’s big edge, in the eyes of many, is his greater experience. He captured the vacant WBC 168-pound title at age 20, becoming the youngest super middleweight champion in history. As a pro, Benavidez has answered the bell for 148 rounds compared with only 54 for Morrell, but Bob Santos thinks this angle is largely irrelevant.

“Sure, I’d rather have pro experience than amateur experience,” he says, “but if you look at Benavidez’s record, he fought a lot of soft opponents when he was climbing the ladder.”

True. Benavidez, who turned pro at age 16, had his first seven fights in Mexico against a motley assortment of opponents. His first bout on U.S. soil occurred in his native Pheonix against an opponent with a 1-6-2 record.

While it’s certainly true that Morrell, 26, has yet to fight an opponent the caliber of Caleb Plant, he took up boxing at roughly the same tender age as Benavidez and earned his spurs in the vaunted Cuban amateur system, eventually defeating elite amateurs in international tournaments.

“If you look at his [pro] record, you will notice that [Morrell] has hardly lost a round,” says Santos of the fighter who captured an interim title in only his third professional bout with a 12-round decision over Guyanese veteran Lennox Allen.

Bob Santos is something of a late bloomer. He was around boxing for a long time, assisting such notables as Joe Goossen, Emanuel Steward, and Ronnie Shields before becoming recognized as one of the sport’s top trainers.

A native of San Jose, he grew up in a Hispanic neighborhood but not in a household where Spanish was spoken. “I know enough now to get by,” he says modestly. He attended James Lick High School whose most famous alumnus is Heisman winning and Super Bowl winning quarterback Jim Plunkett. “We worked in the same apricot orchard when we were kids,” says Santos. “Not at the same time, but in the same field.”

After graduation, he followed his father’s footsteps into construction work, but boxing was always beckoning. A cousin, the late Luis Molina, represented the U.S. as a lightweight in the 1956 Melbourne Summer Olympics, and was good enough as a pro to appear in a main event at Madison Square Garden where he lost a narrow decision to the notorious Puerto Rican hothead Frankie Narvaez, a future world title challenger.

Santos’ cousin was a big draw in San Jose in an era when the San Jose / Sacramento territory was the bailiwick of Don Chargin. “Don was a beautiful man and his wife Lorraine was even nicer,” says Santos of the husband/wife promotion team who are enshrined in the International Boxing Hall of Fame. Don Chargin was inducted in 2001 and Lorraine posthumously in 2018.

Chargin promoted Fresno-based featherweight Hector Lizarraga who captured the IBF title in 1997. Lizarraga turned his career around after a 5-7-3 start when he hooked up with San Jose gym operator Miguel Jara. It was one of the most successful reclamation projects in boxing history and Bob Santos played a part in it.

Bob hopes to accomplish the same turnaround with Jeison Rosario whose career was on the skids when Santos got involved. In his most recent start, Rosario held heavily favored Jarrett Hurd to a draw in a battle between former IBF 154-pound champions on a ProBox card in Florida.

“I consider that one of my greatest achievements,” says Santos, noting that Rosario was stopped four times and effectively out of action for two years before resuming his career and is now on the cusp of earning another title shot.

The boxer with whom Santos is most closely identified is former four-division world title-holder Robert “The Ghost” Guerrero. The slick southpaw, the pride of Gilroy, California, the self-proclaimed “Garlic Capital of the World,” retired following a bad loss to Omar Figueroa Jr, but had second thoughts and is currently riding a six-fight winning streak. “I’ve known him since he was 15 years old,” notes Santos.

Years from now, Santos may be more closely identified with the Pero brothers, Dainier and Lenier, who aspire to be the Cuban-American version of the Klitschko brothers.

Santos describes Dainier, one of the youngest members of Cuba’s Olympic Team in Tokyo, as a bigger version of Oleksandr Usyk. That may be stretching it, but Dainier (10-0, 8 KOs as a pro), certainly hits harder.

Dainier Pero

This reporter was a fly on the wall as Santos put Dainier Pero through his paces on Tuesday (Jan. 14) at Bones Adams gym in Las Vegas. Santos held tight to a punch shield, in the boxing vernacular a donut, as the Cuban practiced his punches. On several occasions the trainer was knocked off-balance and the expression on his face as his body absorbed some of the after-shocks, plainly said, “My goodness, what the hell am I doing here? There has to be an easier way to make a living.” It was an assignment that Santos would have undoubtedly preferred handing off to his young assistant, his son Joe Santos, but Joe was preoccupied coordinating David Morrell’s camp.

Dainer’s brother Lenier is also an ex-Olympian, and like Dainier was a super heavyweight by trade as an amateur. With an 11-0 (8 KOs) record, Lenier Pero’s pro career was on a parallel path until stalled by a managerial dispute. Lenier last fought in March of last year and Santos says he will soon join his brother in Las Vegas.

There’s little to choose between the Pero brothers, but Dainier is considered to have the bigger upside because at age 25 he is the younger sibling by seven years.

Bob Santos was in the running again this year for The Ring magazine’s Trainer of the Year, one of six nominees for the honor that was bestowed upon his good friend Robert Garcia. Considering the way that Santos’ career is going, it’s a safe bet that he will be showered with many more accolades in the years to come.

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