Pacquiao And Fans Better Get A Grip On Reality That Mayweather Won

Published

10 years ago

August 25, 2015

As a six year old in 1964, and seeing Cassius Clay on TV for the first time (right before he challenged Sonny Liston for the undisputed heavyweight title), I’ve been obsessed with the sport of amateur and professional boxing.

I’ve spent countless hours thinking about it, watching it, training, sparring and fighting and then back to observing it both near and from afar.

And after all that, one of the things that amazes me the most is how often and easily fighters and their fans lie to themselves.

I remember as a 12-year old trying to convince anyone who would listen that Muhammad Ali was robbed of the decision the first time he fought “Smokin” Joe Frazier on March 8th, 1971. I reasoned that the boxing establishment was out to get Ali because of his opposition to the Vietnam war. Even going as far as to say that Judge Bill Recht, who scored the fight 11-4 in favor of Frazier, must’ve had a son who was drafted and that’s why he was so biased in how he saw the fight in favor of Frazier so decidedly.

Well, around 1972 I was re-watching the Super 8MM version of the fight with my friend across the street who loved Frazier as much as I loved Ali. While we were watching the fight for the umpteenth time, I was going through my theatrics every time Muhammad landed a punch trying to illustrate how Ali really won the bout. However, I noticed my buddy fell asleep and it was a waste of time trying to convince him that my guy won. So I sat down and continued watching the fight. As the rounds went by I asked myself if I just landed on earth from Mars and didn’t know the name of either guy, who would I think was getting the better of it; the short guy wearing the green trunks or the tall guy wearing the red trunks? And for the first time I was honest and said if I didn’t know who was who, I’d say the short guy in green trunks was winning….as we all know Ali was the taller guy sporting the red trunks and tassels on his boxing shoes. From that moment on I promised myself that I’d never lie to myself regarding whether or not my fighter or team won or lost. At that moment I realized that my manhood or self-worth had nothing to do regarding whether or not my guy won or lost.

Today, when I re-watch Frazier-Ali I, I realize Bill Recht’s score of 11-4 wasn’t that far off. I usually score the fight 9-6 Frazier with 10-5 being very plausible. I was at the fight that night watching it live from the rafters of Madison Square Garden and had no doubt Joe won convincingly seeing it live and in the moment. A few years later Ali even admitted that he lost the first Frazier fight. He came back and beat Joe in their two subsequent bouts to win their trilogy and historically Ali deservedly ranks above Frazier.

When Floyd Mayweather won a unanimous decision over Manny Pacquiao earlier this year, many Mayweather haters and Pacquiao fans cried over the decision and tried to convince anyone who would listen that Pacquiao really won the fight, which is flat out wrong. They reasoned that Floyd ran and Manny was the aggressor. This actually borders on being insane. Mayweather didn’t run, he used his feet and boxed Pacquiao as it was stated in this space he would numerous times since 2009. He took advantage of Pacquiao’s ineptness at cutting off the ring and his tendency to fight in spurts instead of applying bell-to-bell aggression. In fact, Pacquiao wasn’t close to being an effective aggressor and wasn’t even Floyd’s toughest fight, something that had a lot to do with their natural fighting styles and Mayweather’s advantages in size and reach.

This past week Chris Chase of the USA today wrote, “Think back to this past May, if you will. It was a Saturday night. You gathered with your friends, either at their place or yours, then you collectively sat around, put $100 into the toilet and flushed, just waving goodbye to that substantial amount of cash. Remember that? The night of the dud of the century bout between Floyd Mayweather and Manny Pacquiao, the one Mayweather controlled from the outset while tediously jabbing his way to victory, all while your $99.95 went up in smoke, like the hundred-dollar bills Floyd probably uses to light cigars? Remember that? Well, it’s been three-and-a-half months and Manny Pacquiao still somehow thinks he won that fight.”

Pacquiao thinks he won the fight? Really. Just look at his disposition during the bout after the fifth round and tell me that’s a fighter who really believes in his heart that he’s winning. Manny looked confused and bewildered because he was.

No, Mayweather didn’t beat him up and yes Pacquiao had an injured shoulder, but come on, Mayweather, with the exception of the fourth round, basically controlled the entire bout. He fought when he wanted to. He pot-shotted and boxed when he wanted to and even backed Pacquiao up when he sensed Manny was confused and searching for an answer on how to attack him with even a modicum of success. Something that never really transpired over the course of 12-rounds or 36 minutes of fighting/boxing.

It’s nearly four months out from the fight and Pacquiao is healing from shoulder surgery. There’s no doubt that he’s not done fighting and I expect that he’ll try and get a rematch with Mayweather. If I were him, I certainly would. I’d justify it by reasoning even with one arm I didn’t really get beat up and managed to win a few rounds. And if I’m Mayweather, I’d announce my retirement after I beat Andre Berto and then UN-retire and come back to fight Pacquiao for my 50th career win. And my justification for that would be the money for the fight, though not as good as the first time, will still be off the chart. In addition to that, Pacquiao wasn’t my toughest fight and there’s nothing he can do differently if we fight again.

And therein lays the problem for Manny if he gets another shot at Floyd. Firstly, he better come to reality and accept that he lost to Mayweather and really never even gave him one good scare during the entire fight when they last met. If he accepts the truth, which isn’t a given, somehow he and trainer Freddie Roach better come up with a plan that enables Manny to get inside and force the fight, thus making it impossible for Mayweather not to engage with him. This means Pacquiao will have to reinvent himself stylistically, and those odds aren’t too good, especially if he thinks just bringing more of what didn’t work the last time will work. This is the real world and reinventing himself from a stylistic vantage point won’t be easy. This is the real world and not Rocky III.

Sadly, before Manny even has a chance to try and reconstruct his style, he must break from the mold in which most elite fighters can’t admit they lost unless they were knocked out or punched all over the ring. Based on his thoughts suggesting that he won and Mayweather ran, it doesn’t look good. Lastly, it’s really not all that difficult to accept if you’re a big Pacquiao fan that Mayweather won their fight because he really did. And believe it or not it doesn’t make you less of a person or fan because your guy lost. It’s life and everybody suffers setbacks and defeats, no one is spared from that and hopefully we learn and grow from it.

Frank Lotierzo can be contacted at GlovedFist@Gmail.com

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Frank Lotierzo

Avila Perspective Chap 320: Boots Ennis and Stanionis

Published

9 hours ago

April 11, 2025

David A. Avila

Avila-Perspective-Chap-320:-Boots-Ennis-and-Stanionis.jpg

Jaron “Boots Ennis and Eimantis Stanionus are in the wrong era.

If they had fought in the late 70s and early 80s the boxing world would have seen them regularly on televised fight cards.

Instead, with the world’s attention span diluted by thousands of available programming, this richly talented pair of undefeated welterweights Ennis (33-0, 29 Kos) and Stanionis (15-0, 9 Kos) will battle in the smaller confines of Boardwalk Hall in Atlantic City on Saturday April 12.

Thankfully, DAZN will stream the WBA and IBF welterweight world title fight on the Matchroom Boxing card.

If not for DAZN these two elite fighters and the sport of pro boxing might be completely invisible to the sports entertainment world.

These welterweights are special.

Ennis, a lean whip-quick fighter out of Philadelphia, stylistically reminds me of a Tommy Hearns but not as tall or long-armed as the Detroit fighter of the past.

“Win on Saturday and I’m the WBA, IBF and Ring Magazine champion, and then we’ll see what’s next. But I am zoned in on Stanionis,” said Ennis the IBF titlist.

Lithuania’s Stanionis and his pressure style liken to a Marvelous Marvin Hagler who would walk through fire to reach striking distance of a foes chin or abdomen.

“Ennis is slick, explosive, and they say he’s the future of the division. That’s why I signed the contract. I don’t duck anyone—I run toward the fire,” Stanionis said.

When Hagler and Hearns met in Las Vegas on April 1985, their reputations had been built on television with millions watching against common foes like Roberto Duran and Juan Roldan. Both had different styles just like Stanionis and Ennis and both could punch.

One difference was their ability to take a punch.

Hagler had a chin of steel, Hearns did not.

When Ennis and Stanionis meet in the boxing ring this Saturday, each is facing the most dangerous fighter of his career. Whose chin will hold up is the true question?

“This isn’t gonna be a chess match. This is going to be a war,” said Stanionis who holds the WBA title. “I’m stepping into that ring to test him, break him, and beat him. Let’s see how he handles real pressure.”

Ennis just wants to win.

“I’m at the point right now where I don’t care what people say,” said Ennis. “I’m here to do one thing and that’s put hands on you, that’s it.”

Golden Boy in Oceanside, CA

Next week budding star Charles Conway (21-0, 16 Kos) meets Mexico’s Jorge Garcia Perez (32-4, 26 Kos) in the semi-main event at Frontwave Arena in Oceanside, California on Saturday April 19.

The two super welterweights are both ranked in the top 10 and the winner moves up to the elite level of the very stacked super welterweight division.

Conwell, who trains in Cleveland, Ohio, has been one of boxing’s best kept secrets and someone few champions and contenders want to face. Take my word for it, this kid can fight.

On the main event is undisputed female flyweight world champion Gabriela Fundora (15-0, 7 Kos) defending all her titles against Mexico’s Marilyn Badillo (19-0-1, 3 Kos).

Fundora is quickly becoming the most feared champion in boxing.

360 Promotions

Super welter prospect Sadridden Akhmedov (15-0, 13 Kos) meets Elias Espadas (23-6, 16 Kos) in the main event on Saturday April 19, at the Commerce Casino in Commerce, Calif. The 360 Promotions event will be streamed on UFC Fight Pass.

Also, Roxy Verduzco (3-0) meets Jessica Radtke (1-1-1) in a six rounds featherweight battle.

Fights to Watch

Sat. DAZN 5 p.m. Jarron Ennis (33-0) vs Eamantis Stanionis (15-0).

Photo credit: Mark Robinson

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Dzmitry Asanau Flummoxes Francesco Patera on a Ho-Hum Card in Montreal

Published

1 day ago

April 10, 2025

Arne K. Lang

Dzmitry-Asanau-Flummoxes-Franesco-Patera-on-a-Ho-Hum-Card-in-Montreal

Dzmitry Asanau Flummoxes Francesco Patera on a Ho-Hum Card in Montreal

Camille Estephan’s Eye of the Tiger Promotions was at its regular pop stand at the Montreal Casino tonight. Upsets on Estephan’s cards are as rare as snow on the Sahara Desert and tonight was no exception.

The main event was a 10-round lightweight contest between Dzmitry “The Wasp” Asanau and Francesco Patera.

A second-generation prizefighter – his father was reportedly an amateur champion in Russia – Asanau, 28, had a wealth of international amateur experience and represented Belarus in the Tokyo Olympics. His punches didn’t sting like a wasp, but he had too much class for Belgium’s Patera whose claim to fame was that he went 10 rounds with current WBO lightweight champion Keyshawn Davis.

Two of the judges scored every round for the Wasp (10-0, 4 KOs) with the other seeing it 98-92. Patera falls to 30-6.

Co-Feature

Fast-rising Mexican-Canadian welterweight Christopher Guerrero was credited with three knockdowns en route to a one-sided 10-round decision over Oliver Quintana. A two-time Canadian amateur champion, Guererro improved to 14-0 (8).

The fight wasn’t quite as lopsided as what the scorecards read (99-88 and 98-89 twice). None of the knockdowns were particularly harsh and the middle one was a dubious call by the referee.

It was a quick turnaround for Guerrero who scored the best win of his career 8 weeks ago in this ring. The spunky but out-gunned Quintana, whose ledger declined to 22-4, was making his first start outside Mexico.

After his victory, Guerrero was congratulated by ringsider Terence “Bud” Crawford who has a date with Canelo Alvarez in September, purportedly in Las Vegas at the home of the NFL’s Raiders. Canelo has an intervening fight with William Scull on May 4 (May 3 in the U.S.) in Saudi Arabia.

Other Bouts of Note

In a fight without an indelible moment, Mary Spencer improved to 10-2 (6) with a lopsided decision over Ogleidis Suarez (31-6-1). The scores were 99-91 and 100-90 twice. Spencer was making the first defense of her WBA super welterweight title. (She was bumped up from an interim champion to a full champion when Terri Harper vacated the belt.)

A decorated amateur, the 40-year-old Spencer has likely reached her ceiling as a pro. A well-known sports personality in Venezuela, Suarez, 37, returned to the ring in January after a 26-month hiatus. An 18-year pro, she began her career as a junior featherweight.

In a monotonously one-sided fight, Jhon Orobio, a 21-year-old Montreal-based Colombian, advanced to 13-0 (11) with an 8-round shutout over Argentine campaigner Sebastian Aguirre (19-7). Orobio threw the kitchen sink at his rugged Argentine opponent who was never off his feet.

Wyatt Sanford

The pro debut of Nova Scotia’s Wyatt Sanford, a bronze medalist at the Paris Olympics, fell out when Sanford’s opponent was unable to make weight. The opponent, 37-year-old slug Shawn Archer, was reportedly so dehydrated that he had to be hospitalized.

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Remembering Hall of Fame Boxing Trainer Kenny Adams

Published

2 days ago

April 9, 2025

Arne K. Lang

Remembering-Hall--Fame-Boxing-Trainer-Kenny-Adams

The flags at the International Boxing Hall of Fame in Canastota, New York, are flying at half-staff in honor of boxing trainer Kenny Adams who passed away Monday (April 7) at age 84 at a hospice in Las Vegas. Adams was formally inducted into the Hall in June of last year but was too ill to attend the ceremony.

A native of Cape Girardeau, Missouri, Adams was a retired Army master sergeant who was part of an elite squadron that conducted many harrowing missions behind enemy lines during the Vietnam War. A two-time All-Service boxing champion, his name became more generally known in 1984 when he served as the assistant coach of the U.S. Olympic boxing team that won 11 medals, eight gold, at the Los Angeles Summer Games. In 1988, he was the head coach of the squad that won eight medals, three gold, at the Olympiad in Seoul.

Adams’ work caught the eye of Top Rank honcho Bob Arum who induced Adams to move to Las Vegas and coach a team of fledgling pros that he had recently signed. Bantamweight Eddie Cook and junior featherweight Kennedy McKinney, Adams’ first two champions, bubbled out of that pod. Both represented the U.S. Army as amateurs. McKinney was an Olympic gold medalist. Adams would eventually play an instrumental role in the development of more than two dozen world title-holders including such notables as Diego Corrales, Edwin Valero, Freddie Norwood, and Terence Crawford.

When Eddie Cook won his title from Venezuela’s 36-1 Israel Contreras, it was a big upset. Adams, the subject of a 2023 profile in these pages, was subsequently on the winning side of two upsets of far greater magnitude. He prepared French journeyman Rene Jacquot for Jacquot’s date with Donald Curry on Feb. 11 1989 and prepared Vincent Phillips for his engagement with Kostya Tszyu on May 31, 1997.

Jacquot won a unanimous decision over Curry. Phillips stopped Tszyu in the 10^th frame. Both fights were named Upset of the Year by The Ring magazine.

Adams’ home-away-from-home in his final years as a boxing coach was the DLX boxing gym which opened in the summer of 2020 in a former dry cleaning establishment on the west-central side of the city. It was fortuitous to the gym’s owner Trudy Nevins that Adams happened to live a few short blocks away.

“He helped me get the place up and running,” notes Nevins who endowed a chair, as it were, in honor of her esteemed helpmate.

No one in the Las Vegas boxing community was closer to Kenny Adams than Brandon Woods. “He was a mentor to me in boxing and in life in general, a father figure,” says Woods, who currently trains Trevor McCumby and Rocky Hernandez, among others.

Akin to Adams, Woods is a Missourian. His connection to Adams comes through his amateur coach Frank Flores, a former teammate of Adams on an all-Service boxing team and an assistant under Adams with the 1988 U.S. Olympic squad.

Woods was working with Nonito Donaire when he learned that he had cancer (now in remission). He cajoled Kenny Adams out of retirement to assist with the training of the Las Vegas-based Filipino and they were subsequently in the corner of Woods’ fighter DeeJay Kriel when the South African challenged IBF 105-pound title-holder Carlos Licona at the Microsoft Theater in Los Angeles on Feb. 16, 2019.

This would be the last time they worked together in the corner and it proved to be a joyous occasion.

After 11 rounds, the heavily favored Licona, a local fighter trained by Robert Garcia, had a seemingly insurmountable lead. He was ahead by seven points on two of the scorecards. In the final round, Kriel knocked him down three times and won by TKO.

“I will always remember the pep talk that Kenny gave DeeJay before that final round,” says Woods. “He said ‘You mean to tell me that you came all the way from across the pond to get to this point and not win a title?’ but in language more colorful than that; I’m paraphrasing.”

“After the fight, Kenny said to me, ‘In all my years of training guys, I never saw that.’”

The fight attracted little attention before or after (it wasn’t the main event), but it would enter the history books. Boxing writer Eric Raskin, citing research by Steve Farhood, notes that there have been only 16 instances of a boxer winning a world title fight by way of a last-round stoppage of a bout he was losing. The most famous example is the first fight between Julio Cesar Chavez and Meldrick Taylor. Kriel vs. Licona now appears on the same list.

Brandon Woods notes that the Veterans Administration moved Adams around quite a bit in his final months, shuffling him to hospitals in North Las Vegas, Kingman, Arizona, and then Boulder City (NV) before he was placed in a hospice.

When Woods visited Adams last week, Adams could not speak. “If you can hear me, I would say to him, please blink your eyes. He blinked.

“There are a couple of people in my life I thought would never leave us and Kenny is one,” said Woods with a lump in his throat.

Photo credit: Supreme Boxing

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