Aging Legend Manny Pacquiao Fighting Father Time as Much as Keith Thurman

Published

5 years ago

June 24, 2019

Aging-Legend-Manny-Pacquiao-Fighting-Father-Time-as-Much-as-Keith-Thurman

The great Sugar Ray Leonard, he of the five retirements from boxing that didn’t stick, was musing about the reasons why aging boxers of all levels of accomplishment find it so difficult to quit the ring. His thoughts on the subject might not be of particular interest to another legendary fighter, 40-year-old Manny Pacquiao, who takes on WBA welterweight champion Keith Thurman, 10 years his junior and still presumably at or near the top of his game, in the PBC on Fox Pay-Per View main event on July 20 at Las Vegas’ MGM Grand. But if history tells us anything about the natural laws of diminishing returns, “Pac Man” would be well-advised to take note of what Leonard said of his own personal experience.

“You always think of yourself as the best you ever were,” Leonard offered. “That’s human nature. And that’s not just how highly successful people think. Everybody thinks that way. Most fighters come back for the money. They need another payday and there are people around them feeding their egos, telling them how good they still are, because they want a piece of the action. Maybe they come back because they really don’t know anything but boxing and they’re apprehensive about entering the next phase of their lives that doesn’t include it.

“But even if money is not an issue, and you have other options, you never lose that belief in yourself as a fighter, particularly if you’ve been to the very top of the mountain. (Being retired) eats at you. It’s hard to find anything else that can give you that high.”

The Sugar Man, one of the finest fighters of his or any era, knows of whence he speaks. Everyone – well, almost everyone – thought he was off his rocker to try to come back after 35 months of inactivity to challenge seemingly invincible middleweight champion Marvelous Marvin Hagler on April 6, 1987. But Leonard, whose list of defeated opponents includes such stellar names as Wilfred Benitez, Thomas Hearns (against whom he was 1-0-1), Roberto Duran (2-1), and a significantly larger Donny Lalonde, reached back in time to dethrone Hagler via split decision, albeit a controversial one, in the process showing flashes of his electrifying former self.

No wonder Leonard allowed himself the luxury of believing that he was somehow immune to the bits and pieces of excellence that Father Time siphons from top-tier fighters who linger too long in a brutal profession. But then, why shouldn’t he have thought that? When he shocked Hagler, Leonard was still a month shy of his 31^st birthday.

It should have gloriously ended there for one of the all-time greats, just as it should have ended on a similarly high note for Muhammad Ali after his epic conquest of George Foreman in Africa. But when you’ve been to the very top of the mountain and remained there long enough to savor the view, it’s easy to convince yourself you’re still as good as you ever were. After a nearly four-year hiatus, the 35-year-old Leonard came back again on March 1, 1997, and took a frightful beating from an updated version of himself, 23-year-old WBC super welterweight champion Terry Norris, who floored him twice en route to winning a lopsided unanimous decision at Madison Square Garden. It is a testament to how much fans continued to love and believe in Leonard that he actually went off as the betting favorite that night. As was the case when a depleted Ali was battered into submission by Larry Holmes in Las Vegas, some Leonard devotees were seen weeping as they left the Garden.

There was, of course, one final act that had to be played out before Sugar Ray could come to grips with the realization that there was no more magic for him to make inside the ropes. Then a nearly 41-year-old grandfather and coming off a six-year layoff, Leonard was stopped in five rounds by light-punching Hector “Macho” Camacho on March 1, 1997, in Atlantic City.

“This is indeed my last fight, my last venture into the boxing ring,” Leonard announced of the retirement that finally was written in fast-drying concrete instead of wet sand. He had been away so long that the five-year mandatory waiting period for induction into the International Boxing Hall of Fame had passed and he would be enshrined a little more than three months later in Canastota, N.Y.

Almost all truly special fighters – with the exception of Rocky Marciano, Hagler and Lennox Lewis, who stepped away while still at or near the top of their game and somehow were able to resist the urge to again lace up the gloves – yield to the temptation to try to relive past glories. Just as Napoleon had his Waterloo, a depleted Joe Louis was confronted with harsh reality in the form of the younger, powerful Marciano and Bernard Hopkins’ personal Fountain of Youth at long last dried up against construction worker Joe Smith Jr.

Which brings us back to Pacquiao, the Fab Filipino who is the only fighter ever to win world championships in eight weight classes. He is a mortal-lock first-ballot Hall of Famer and a source of wonderment to those who have followed his remarkable career. Nothing that happens going forward can detract from that gleaming legacy. But consider the mounting evidence that Manny the Magnificent has been a downgraded version of himself for quite a while. The whirling dervish and three-time Boxing Writers Association of America Fighter of the Year who pummeled, among others, Oscar De La Hoya, Ricky Hatton, Marco Antonio Barrera, Erik Morales and Miguel Cotto has won only one of his last 16 bouts inside the distance, a seventh-round stoppage of Lucas Matthysse on July 15 of last year, which snapped a nine-year, 15-fight KO-less streak in which he was defeated four times, including a one-punch knockout in his fourth meeting with Juan Manuel Marquez.

The Pacquiao (61-7-2, 39 KOs) who will swap punches with Keith “One Time” Thurman (29-0, 22 KOs) remains as imperious and defiant as ever, and he points to his most recent ring appearance, a wide decision over Adrien Broner on Jan. 19, as proof that any erosion is minimal, if at all.

“I’m never scared or intimidated by any opponent,” Pacquiao said of the rarity of going into a fight as an underdog. “My time is not yet over. My journey will continue. That’s what I will prove on July 20.

“The feeling that I have right now, I don’t feel this since the De La Hoya fight. I feel like I’m fighting with De La Hoya again. I’m excited and I like being the underdog for this fight. Sometimes in the past I became careless and overconfident because I am favored in nearly every fight. This time is different. I chose Keith Thurman because he’s undefeated and I want to prove that at the age of 40 I can still beat an undefeated fighter like Keith.”

Not unexpectedly, Thurman has a different vision of how his matchup with the living legend will end. “I’ve never lost to a fighter who’s lost seven times,” said Thurman, who obviously has yet to lose to anyone. “I have no intention of losing to Manny Pacquiao. I don’t see him winning in any way, shape or form. He’s 40, I’m 30. I want to show him I ain’t Adrien Broner.

“This most likely will be Manny Pacquiao’s last fight. In the welterweight division, the king was Floyd Mayweather. He is gone. The legend, Pacquiao, he’s here. Come July 20, he will be gone, too.”

Maybe so, and maybe not. It is difficult for any unabashed fan to acknowledge the rust spots on a favorite fighter, and particularly so if you feel as if that individual should forever remain as fresh and unsullied in our memory as when we first detected whatever qualities that so obviously set him apart. For me, that initial glimpse came on June 23, 2001, at the MGM Grand. A 22-year-old Pacquiao, whose 32 previous pro bouts had all been staged in his native Philippines or Japan, was making his United States debut as the virtually anonymous challenger to IBF super bantamweight champion Lehlo Ledwaba of South Africa. They met on the undercard of a show headlined by De La Hoya’s dethronement of WBC super welterweight titlist Javier Castillejo.

Although the announced attendance for the main event was 12,480, maybe only a third of that number were in their seats for the opening bell of Ledwaba-Pacquiao. Even the press section was mostly empty. But I nonetheless was moved to compliment the new champ, who stopped Ledwaba in six rounds, in my story for the Philadelphia Daily News. I wrote that Pacquiao had “electrified the crowd,” what little there was of it, while “flooring Ledwaba three times and beating him bloody.” I remember thinking, “Geez, this guy is really, really good. He could be something special.” As it turned out, he has been all that, and more.

In 1972’s Academy Award-winning film The Godfather, there is a scene in which temporarily exiled American Michael Corleone is walking the hills in Sicily with two bodyguards when he glimpses the lovely Apollonia and is instantly mesmerized. It might be the best example ever captured on celluloid of someone falling in love at first sight.

“I think you got hit by the thunderbolt,” one of the bodyguards tells the smitten Michael.

My “discovery” of Pacquiao was not the first time I was so immediately taken by an athlete that he would forever occupy a place in my heart and mind. It began when I was nine years old, in 1957, when I decided that St. Louis Cardinals superstar Stan Musial, then in his 15^th major league season and on his way to winning his seventh and last National League batting championship, would be my personal hero. In Stan the Man’s final season, 1963, the Cardinals won 19 of 20 late in the season to close within a game of pennant-winning Los Angeles, but they were swept by the Dodgers in a three-game series, denying Musial, 42, a return to the World Series he had not appeared in since 1946, the year before I was born. I would have sold my soul, or at least rented it out, had it meant Stan would get to take his cuts in the Fall Classic against the New York Yankees.

There would be athletes in other sports who also would move me to such a degree: Billy Cannon, the All-America halfback of the national championship LSU Tigers in 1958, and the 1959 Heisman Trophy winner; quarterback Roger Staubach when he played at Navy; Walter Payton, whom I came across when he was a sophomore at Jackson State and I was a young sports writer in Jackson, Miss. I did a story for The Sporting News before the 1975 NFL draft in which I asserted that Payton would be much better in the pros than two-time Heisman winner Archie Griffin of Ohio State, which prompted a deluge of hate mail from Buckeyes boosters. In time, I believed I would be proven correct, and I was.

No matter how much we might wish it weren’t so, the inexorable march of time serves as a diminisher of skills and reflexes. Those who make it to the pinnacle of their profession at some point are obliged to begin their descent. Three years ago I authored another story, perhaps a tad prematurely, the gist of which was that Manny Pacquiao no longer was the Manny Pacquiao he had been. He was 37 then, dropping the occasional hint that he was as human and thus as vulnerable as the rest of us. It gave me no pleasure to make the case that “Pac Man” had entered his exit stage. This is how I put it:

The encroachment of age is something no boxer can stave off indefinitely. At first, it approaches even the finest practitioners of the pugilistic arts almost imperceptibly, on little cat’s paws, but the sound eventually becomes noisy enough that it can no longer be disregarded.

One has to wonder if the sound of those little cat’s paws in the mind of 37-year-old Manny Pacquiao has been replaced by the clamor of a snarling, charging tiger. No fighter wants to entertain doubts about his athletic mortality, and that is especially so for those who know the giddy feeling of having been touched by greatness. The best of the best are almost always adherents to the message of resistance authored by British poet Dylan Thomas, who wrote:

Do not go gentle into that good night,

Old age should burn and rave at close of day;

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Pacquiao had enough gas in the tank then to outpoint Timothy Bradley Jr. in their rubber match, and the knockout of a faded Matthysse and the points nod over Broner (a gifted head case who increasingly is demonstrating that he might always have been at least somewhat overrated), could be enough to convince Manny’s most ardent supporters that there is more success to be wrung from the caboose of his lengthy train of once-dominant ring performances.

Trainer Freddie Roach, back in Pacquiao’s corner as his chief second, is convinced his guy can and will reveal himself as the goods, and he’s prepared to put his money where his mouth is.

“I haven’t made a bet in a long time, but the oddsmakers brought me back,” Roach said. “I’m going to make a huge score betting on Manny in this fight. Manny loves beating undefeated fighters, especially the younger ones. That makes it fun for Manny, and when Manny is having fun, his opponents had better watch out.”

Roach’s optimism is countered by Bob Arum, Pacquiao’s longtime former promoter, who is concerned that his onetime drawing card might find out that he is risking more than the mere outcome of a mere boxing match.

“I love Manny Pacquiao. I have a whole lot of history with Manny Pacquiao. I’m really rooting for Manny Pacquiao,” said Arum. “But you have to realize he’s 40 years of age. When a fighter passes his late 30s he’s not going to be as good as he was in his prime.”

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Cardoso, Nunez, and Akitsugi Bring Home the Bacon in Plant City

Published

19 hours ago

December 11, 2024

Arne K. Lang

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Cardoso, Nunez, and Akitsugi Bring Home the Bacon in Plant City

The final ShoBox event of 2025 played out tonight at the company’s regular staging ground in Plant City, Florida. When the smoke cleared, the “A-side” fighters in the featured bouts were 3-0 in step-up fights vs. battle-tested veterans, two of whom were former world title challengers. However, the victors in none of the three fights, with the arguable exception of lanky bantamweight Katsuma Akitsugi, made any great gain in public esteem.

In the main event, a lightweight affair, Jonhatan Cardoso, a 25-year-old Brazilian, earned a hard-fought, 10-round unanimous decision over Los Mochis, Mexico southpaw Eduardo Ramirez. The decision would have been acceptable to most neutral observers if it had been deemed a draw, but the Brazilian won by scores of 97-93 and 96-94 twice.

Cardoso, now 18-1 (15), had the crowd in his corner., This was his fourth straight appearance in Plant City. Ramirez, disadvantaged by being the smaller man with a shorter reach, declined to 28-5-3.

Co-Feature

In a 10-round featherweight fight that had no indelible moments, Luis Reynaldo Nunez advanced to 20-0 (13) with a workmanlike 10-round unanimous decision over Mexico’s Leonardo Baez. The judges had it 99-91 and 98-92 twice.

Nunez, from the Dominican Republic, is an economical fighter who fights behind a tight guard. Reputedly 85-5 as an amateur, he is managed by Sampson Lewkowicz who handles David Benavidez among others and trained by Bob Santos. Baez (22-5) was returning to the ring after a two-year hiatus.

Also

In a contest slated for “10,” ever-improving bantamweight Katsuma Akitsugi improved to 12-0 (3 KOs) with a sixth-round stoppage of Filipino import Aston Palicte (28-7-1). Akitsugi caught Palicte against the ropes and unleashed a flurry of punches climaxed by a right hook. Palicte went down and was unable to beat the count. The official time was 1:07 of round six.

This was the third straight win by stoppage for Akitsugi, a 27-year-old southpaw who trains at Freddie Roach’s Wild Card gym in LA under Roach’s assistant Eddie Hernandez. Palicte, who had been out of the ring for 16 months, is a former two-time world title challenger at superflyweight (115).

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Introducing Jaylan Phillips, Boxing’s Palindrome Man

Published

3 days ago

December 9, 2024

Arne K. Lang

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On Thursday, Nov. 28, as Americans hunkered down at the dinner table with family and friends for our annual Thanksgiving Day feast, junior welterweight Jaylan Phillips and his trainer Kevin Henry were up in the sky flying from Las Vegas to Rochester, New York. For their Thanksgiving repast, they were offered a tiny bag of peanuts.

Phillips would not have eaten too much had the opportunity presented itself. The next day was the weigh-in. On Saturday, the 30^th, he would compete in the 6-round main event of a small club show.

Phillips wasn’t brought to Rochester to win. His opponent, Wilfredo Flores, had a checkered career but he had once held a regional title and he lived in the general area. In boxing parlance, Jaylan Phillips was the “B” side. His role, from the promoter’s standpoint, was to fatten the record of the house fighter.

Jaylan didn’t follow the script. He won a unanimous decision over his 11-3-1 opponent, advancing his record to 4-3-4, and returned to Las Vegas with a new nickname, albeit not one of his own choosing or intended as a permanent accessory. This reporter dubbed him The Palindrome Man.

A palindrome is a word that spells the same backward and forward. Phillips’ current record is palindrome-ish.

It’s an odd record. One would be hard-pressed to find other active boxers with a slew of draws inside a small window of fights. It harks to the days, circa 1900, when some journeymen boxers accumulated as many draws as wins and losses combined.

A boxer with a 4-3-4 record would seem to be an unlikely candidate for a feature story, but the affable Jaylan Phillips is not your run-of-the-mill prizefighter.

Boxers, as we know, tend to be city folk, drawn from the black belts and the barrios of America’s urban places. Phillips grew up in Ebro, Florida, population 237 per the 2020 U.S. census. Ebro is in the Florida panhandle in the northwestern part of the state in a county that was dry until 2022. It is 23 miles due north of Panama City Beach but a world apart from the seaside Florida resort town and its pricey beachfront condos.

Of those 237 people, only five identified as African-American or black, or so it would be written, but the census-taker was obviously slothful. “That’s a crazy number,” says Phillips. “There has to be at least 40 or 50. And the reason I know that is that we are all related.”

“What does one do for excitement in Ebro?” we asked him. “Hunting, fishing, trapping, that sort of thing,” he said. And what does one trap? “Mostly raccoons,” he said, while adding that some of the elders in his extended family consider it a delicacy.

Phillips fought in Rochester, New York, on Saturday and was back in the gym in Las Vegas on Tuesday. He lives alone and does not own a car. His apartment, near UNLV, is three-and-a-half miles from the Top Rank Gym where he does most of his training. He jogs there and then jogs home again, this in a city where the temperature routinely exceeds 100 degrees for much of the year.

During his high school years, Phillips, now 25, concedes that he smoked a lot of weed and it impacted his grades. His interest in boxing was fueled by the exploits of Roy Jones Jr, another fighter with roots in the Florida panhandle. In his spare time, he enjoys watching tapes of old Sugar Ray Robinson fights which can be found on youtube. “He was the best,” says Phillips of Robinson who has been dead for 35 years, echoing an opinion that hasn’t diminished with the passage of time.

In his second pro fight, Phillips was thrust against a baby-faced novice from Cleveland, Abdullah Mason. Although Mason was only 17 years old, the Top Rank matchmaker did Jaylan no favors. He was still standing when the referee waived the fight off in the second round.

About the heavily-hyped Mason, Phillips says, “He’s a beast, like they say, but I would love to fight him again. I took that fight on two weeks’ notice. I’m confident the outcome would have been different if I had had a full camp.”

This observation will undoubtedly strike some as a delusion. Pound for pound, the precocious Mason just may be the top pro fighter in the world in his age group. But Jaylan isn’t lacking confidence which spills over when he talks about what lies ahead for him. “I will be a world champion,” he says matter-of-factly. And after boxing? “I see myself back home in Ebro living a humble life, hunting and fishing, but with a million dollars in the bank.”

If unswerving dedication and self-confidence are the keys to a successful boxing career, then Jaylan Phillips, notwithstanding his 4-3-4 record, is destined for big things. But here’s the rub:

“In boxing, it isn’t what you earn, but what you negotiate,” says the esteemed British boxing pundit Steve Bunce alluding to the importance of a well-connected manager. In a perfect world, each win would be stepping-stone to a bigger fight with a commensurately larger purse. But in this chaotic sport, a “B side” fighter who scores an upset in a low-level fight may actually be penalized for his “impertinence.” Promoters may be wary of using him again (the old “risk/reward” encumbrance) and, in a sport where it’s important for an up-and-comer to stay busy, his progress may be stalled.

Phillips doesn’t know when his next assignment will materialize, but regardless he will keep plugging along while setting an example that others who aspire to greatness would be wise to emulate.

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Emanuel Navarrete and Rafael Espinoza Shine in Phoenix

Published

5 days ago

December 7, 2024

Phil Woolever

Emanuel Navarrete and Rafael Espinoza Shine in Phoenix

PHOENIX – Saturday was a busy night on the global boxing scene, and it’s quite likely that the howling attendees in Phoenix’s Footprint Center witnessed the finest overall card of the international schedule. The many Mexican flags on display in the packed, scaled down arena signaled the event’s theme.

Co-main events featured rematches that arose from a pair of prior crowd-pleasing slugfests. Each of tonight’s headlining bouts ended at the halfway point, but that was their only similarity.

Emanuel “Vaquero” Navarrete, now 39-2-1 (32), defended his WBO Junior Lightweight belt with a dramatic stoppage of more-than-willing Oscar Valdez, 32-3 (24). The 29-year-old champion spoke of retirement wishes, but after dominating a blazing battle in which he scored three knockdowns, his only focus was relaxing during the holidays then getting back to what sounded like long-term business.

“Valdez was extremely tough in this fight,” said Navarrete. “I knew I had to push him back and I did. You are now witnessing the second phase of my career and you can expect great things from me in 2025.”

“I don’t really know about the future,” said the crestfallen, 33-year-old Valdez. “No excuses. He did what he wanted to and I couldn’t.”

Navarrete, a three-division titlist, came up one scorecard short of a fourth belt in his previous fight last May, a split decision loss to Denys Berinchyk. This was Navarrete’s fourth Arizona appearance so he was cheered like a homeboy, but Valdez was definitely the crowd favorite, evident from the cheers that erupted as both fighters were shown arriving in glistening, low rider automobiles.

Both men came out throwing huge shots, but it was Navarrete who scored a flash knockdown in the first round, setting the tone for the rest of the fight. There was fierce action in every frame, with Navarrete getting the best of most of it, but even when he was in trouble Valdez roared back and brought the crowd to their feet. He got dropped again at the very end of round four, and Navarrete sent his mouthpiece into orbit the round after that.

When Navarrette drove Valdez into the ropes during round six it looked like referee Raul Caiz, Jr was about to intervene, but before he could decide, Navarrete finished matters himself with a perfect left to the ribs that crumpled Valdez into a KO at 2:42.

“He talked about getting ready to retire soon so I told him we had to fight again right now,” said Valdez prior to the rematch. There were numerous “be careful what you wish for” type predictions of doom and he entered the ring at around a two to one underdog, understanding the contest’s make or break stakes. “Boxing penalizes you if you have a lot of losses,” observed Valdez. “It’s not like other sports where you can lose and do better next season. In boxing, most people don’t want to see you again after a couple of losses.”

What Valdez might decide remains to be seen, but even in defeat he proved to be a warrior worth watching.

Co-Feature

After their epic, razor-close encounter almost exactly a year ago, it was obvious Rafael Espinoza, and fellow 30-year-old Robeisy Ramirez should meet again for the WBO featherweight title belt Espinoza earned by an upset majority decision. Espinoza turned the trick again this time around, inside the distance, but it was more anti-climactic than anything like toe-to-toe.

The 6’1” Espinoza, now 26-0 (22), was the aggressor from the opening frame, but 5’6” Ramirez, 14-3 (9) employed his short stature well to stay out of immediate danger and countered to the body for a slight edge. The Cuban challenger avoided much of their previous firefight and initially controlled the tempo. The crowd jeered him for staying away but it was an effective strategy, at least at first.

Espinoza connected much better in the fifth round and looked fresher as Ramirez’s face rapidly reddened. Suddenly, seemingly out of nowhere in round six, Ramirez took a punch then raised a glove in surrender. Whatever the reason, even looking at Ramirez’s swollen right eye, it looked like a “No Mas” moment. Replays showed a straight right to the eye socket, but that didn’t stop the crowd from hooting their disgust after ref Chris Flores signaled the end at 0:12.

***

Richard Torrez, Jr, now 12-0 (11), displayed his Olympic silver medal pedigree in a heavyweight bout against Issac Munoz, 18-2-1 (15). Torrez, 236.6, found his punching range quickly with southpaw leads as Munoz, 252, tried to stand his ground but looked hurt by early body work that forced him into the ropes. He was gasping for breath as Torrez peppered him in the second, and Munoz went back to his corner on unsteady legs.

Munoz’s team should have thought about saving him for another day in the third as he ate big shots. Luckily, referee Raul Caiz, Jr. was wiser and had seen enough, waving it off for a TKO at 0:59.

“I don’t train for the opponent,” reflected Torrez, who isn’t far from true contender status. “Every time I train, I train for a world championship fight.”

***

Super-lightweight Lindolfo Delgado, 139.9, improved to 22-0 (16), and took another step into the world title picture against Jackson Marinez, now 22-4 (10), 139.2.

On paper this junior welterweight matchup appeared fairly even, and Marinez managed to keep it that way for almost half the scheduled ten rounds against a solid prospect but Delgado kept upping the ante until Marinez was out of chips. The assembled swarm was whistling for more action after three tentative opening frames, as Delgado loaded up but couldn’t put much offense together.

That changed in the 4th when Delgado connected with solid crosses. In the fifth, a fine combination dropped Marinez into a delayed knockdown and a wicked follow-up right to the guts finished the wobbly Marinez, who had nothing to be ashamed of, off in the arms of ref Wes Melton. Official TKO time was 2:13.

In a matter of concurrent programming, Saturday also held a lot of highly publicized college football and basketball games which likely detracted from the larger mainstream audience and media coverage this fight card deserved. That’s a shame but you can’t fault boxing, Top Rank, or any of the fighters for that because, once again, they all came through big time in Phoenix.

Photos credit: Mikey Williams / Top Rank

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