Manny Pacquiao Led the Charge of Fortysomethings into the Weekend

George Foreman was 14-0, all of his victories by knockout, 22½ months into the comeback he had launched to much derision after a 10-year retirement, when he uttered the words that since have become a beacon of hope to all boxers who dare to believe they can still compete and win beyond an arbitrary age when most members of their brutal profession either are retired or ought to be.

“Forty isn’t a death sentence,” Big George reasoned upon reaching birthday No. 4-oh on Jan. 10, 1989, to continued skepticism from those media holdouts who correctly pointed out that the former heavyweight champ’s career revival had thus far been built on whacking out a succession of has-beens and never-weres. But Foreman kept on keeping on and, well, you know the rest. That one-punch flattening of WBA/IBF heavyweight champion Michael Moorer in the 10^th round of their Nov. 5, 1994, title bout demonstrated that advancing age is not necessarily a hindrance to certain fighters capable of at least temporarily extending the boundaries of their pugilistic skills.

“When I turned 40, boxing experts thought it was time for me to hang up the gloves,” Foreman is quoted as saying in God in My Corner, the inspirational book he authored with the assistance of writer Ken Abraham. “The great trainer Gil Clancy said, `Boxing has too many retreads. What is George Foreman doing out there boxing? He shouldn’t be fighting.’

“As the calendar pages turned, I wasn’t getting any younger and the skeptics weren’t getting any kinder. What was an old man like me doing in the boxing ring, fighting guys half my age and in much better physical condition? In spite of what the critics said, I was winning every match. They said I was too old at 41. Really old at 42. Should be on a respirator at 43. Age 44? Nearly in the grave. Age 45, heavyweight champion of the world!”

At the 146 pounds he officially weighed in for Saturday night’s Showtime Pay Per View-televised defense of his secondary WBA welterweight title against 29-year-old Adrien Broner, Manny Pacquiao was 104 pounds lighter than Foreman had been the night he instantly turned the lights out on the surprised Moorer, who was too far ahead on the scorecards to have been beaten on points. But although the parallels between the Pacquiao of now, who celebrated his 40^th birthday on Dec. 17, and the Foreman of late 1994 are limited, the impact made by each at this presumably twilight stage of their respective Hall of Fame careers is eerily similar. Who knows? Maybe “Pac-Man” soon will be pitching his signature line of grills on television.

“At the age of 40 I can still give my best,” Pacquiao (61-7-2, 39 KOs) said after pitching a near-shutout at the outclassed and delusional Broner (33-4-1, 24 KOs), who loudly and ridiculously proclaimed that it was he who should have been awarded the victory despite what a sellout crowd of 13,025 in Las Vegas’ MGM Grand Garden and the Showtime PPV audience had just witnessed. As it was, judges Dave Moretti, Tim Cheatham and Glenn Feldman seemingly were overly generous to Broner, favoring Pacquiao by respective margins of 117-111 and 116-112 (twice) when a case could be made for the once and maybe still Fab Filipino winning all 12 rounds, and no less than 10 by any reasonable assessment. Punch statistics compiled by CompuBox further verified “Pac-Man’s” level of domination as he connected on 112 of 568, on several occasions clearly hurting and wobbling Broner, who landed just 50 of 295.

Maybe the 40-year-old (and counting) Pacquiao no longer can still give his very best – that would be the version who brutalized and stopped such elite opponents as Oscar De La Hoya, Ricky Hatton and Miguel Cotto – but those watershed triumphs occurred nearly a decade ago. The elder statesman on display against Broner, fighting for the first time on U.S. soil in 26 months and for the first time under the banner of Premier Boxing Champions, nonetheless is popular enough and good enough to remain a factor in a welterweight division loaded with such young, dangerous champions as Errol Spence Jr., Terence Crawford and Keith Thurman, all of whom presumably would be favored were they to be paired with the living legend who might not be as far gone as previously had been imagined.

Interestingly, Pacquiao’s Saturday night dismissal of Broner began what might be termed the Weekend of the Fortysomethings, which a day later featured two long-in-the-tooth NFL quarterbacks who were attempting to embellish their legacies as all-time greats by punching their tickets to Super Bowl LIII Feb. 3 in Atlanta. Tom Brady, 41 and still going strong, engineered another clutch, game-winning drive in leading the New England Patriots to a 37-31 overtime victory over the Kansas City Chiefs in the AFC Championship Game in frigid KC, and the New Orleans Saints’ Drew Brees, who turned 40 on Jan. 15, was shafted out of a marquee matchup with Brady on possibly the worst non-call in NFL history, a missed pass interference call in the red zone that opened the door for the Los Angeles Rams to pull out a gift 26-23 overtime victory in the NFC Conference title contest in N’Awlins.

In retrospect, George Foreman was correct. Forty need not be a death sentence in the athletic arena, not with improved health and training regimens that have turned 40 into the new 30, or at least the new 35. It should be noted that Floyd Mayweather Jr., who turns 42 on Feb. 24, was sitting ringside for Pacquiao-Broner, fueling speculation that he and Pacquiao, whom he outpointed in their May 2, 2015, megafight that even then was criticized as having been staged five years later than it should have been, might share the ring again for pride and profit. Looking as fit as ever, Mayweather journeyed to Japan where, on Dec. 31, he destroyed 20-year-old kickboxer Tenshin Nasukawa in less than three minutes. A do-over between the two old guys, which not so long ago would have scoffed at, almost certainly would be another must-see attraction were it to happen.

Other Big Names at Welterweight

The mix ’n’ match possibilities at 147 are enough to make any true fight fan salivate. Promotional and TV alliances of course will prove problematic, as they always are, but what’s not to like in a division that includes current or former world champs Spence, Crawford, Thurman, Shawn Porter, Danny Garcia, Amir Khan, Jeff Horn, Jessie Vargas, Luis Collazo, Devon Alexander and an apparently revitalized Pacquiao? But upon further inspection, those are not the only big names at welter. In fact, there are much bigger names in the ratings of the four most widely recognized sanctioning bodies.

Literally bigger, that is.

Thanks to the steady stream of Eastern Europeans and Central Asians making their mark in several weight classes, among the ranked welterweights are Egidijus Kavaliauskas (21-0, 17 KOs) of Lithuania, Karen Chukhadzhyan (13-1, 7 KOs) of Ukraine, Bakhtiyar Eyubov (13-0, 11 KOs) of Kazakhstan and Radzhad Butaev (9-0, 7 KOs) of Russia.

Another fighter who should be on that list of difficult-to spell tongue-twisters is the Man With Two Names, an Uzbekistani who is listed as Qudratillo Abduqaxorov by the IBF, which has him as its No. 4-rated welterweight, and Kudratillo Abdukakhorov, who is rated No. 5 by the WBC. By either name the 25-year-old has the same 15-0 record with nine knockouts, same age and same country of birth. To avoid confusion, I’ll go with Kudratillo Abdukakhorov because that’s how he’s listed by BoxRec.com.

All of these guys figure to cause nightmares for most U.S. sports writers and broadcasters, who I’m guessing will struggle with the correct spelling and pronunciation of their names if they begin to get regular fights on these shores. They can only hope that the ring announcer assigned to work their bouts in America or anywhere is Jimmy Lennon Jr., who learned from his Hall of Fame father, the late Jimmy Lennon Sr., that getting it right is and always should be a paramount consideration. I mean, who would ever think that the proper pronunciation of the last name of famed Duke University basketball coach Mike Krzyzewski is Sha-shef-skee?

“To have an affinity for languages is important,” Jimmy the younger told me in advance of his own induction into the International Boxing Hall of Fame in 2013. “That was instilled in me by my father. I take the time to talk to the fighters if I don’t know them and find out the pronunciation of their name, their nicknames, what hometown they’re from – everything that’s important to them. There’s nothing more sweet to a man’s ear than to hear his name pronounced properly.”

Really, though, the ring announcer’s job is so much easier when the guy being introduced is, say, Joe Smith Jr., the light heavyweight who spoiled Bernard Hopkins’ farewell fight and will challenge WBA 175-pound titlist Dmitry Bivol on March 9 in Verona, N.Y. It’s pretty hard to mess up a name like Joe Smith.

Photo credit: Marcelino Castillo

Bernard Fernandez is the retired boxing writer for the Philadelphia Daily News. He is a five-term former president of the Boxing Writers Association of America, an inductee into the Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Atlantic City Boxing Halls of Fame and the recipient of the Nat Fleischer Award for Excellence in Boxing Journalism and the Barney Nagler Award for Long and Meritorious Service to Boxing.

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