It costs more than is fiscally prudent to spend to watch a good HBO Pay Per View event. I watched the Pacquiao fight though, because I'm rich. And like my rich brother Floyd Mayweather, I am also financially irresponsible. He burns money on stages, I keep choosing those $3 candy bars in favor of the M&M's. "M&M's are pedestrian," my mother used to say, "thou shalt be rather without thy health insured than with a brown packet in thy paw." My mother was born in 1778, in Heventon, Birmanshire, Lilinhem, Grass Pasture, Mott, Italy, to five fathers, all of whom owned five companies. Needless to say when it comes to buying a Mexi-Fillipino fight on HBO, I put up. But in this one case, I didn't.
So I saw the fight ... and there seems to have been some controversy surrounding the Pacquiao majority decision. Two judges scored in favor of Pacquiao, one scored Pacquiao and Juan Manuel Marquez as equals. I don't know about all that, but why don't I say a little something about the event before the decision. It was a floppy haired, toned-trapezius, dancing, smiling, crowd rocking affair - then the fight started. And I was mesmerized! There was a moment in the sixth round (I believe), after a particularly violent previous round, where both boxers were so weary of the other's ability to end the fight with one combination, that neither punched. Pacquiao came in close and Marquez waited, then Pacquiao trickled and tippied, got close again, and relented at Marquez's seizing stare. The crowd was taught, the announcers were too engaged, too excited to speak. For a minute and a half of the three minute round, I felt like I was in a still gym, holding the speed bag in my left hand, right arm down at my side, watching, just watching two bad men feel each other out, work each other down. I leaned forward in my comfortable (b/c I'm rich) chair and listened for the patter of their feet... Turns out there's no way to hear that shit. I mean they're not Gods, they're closer to deer. Anyway Pacquiao got close again and hit Marquez, and literally at the same moment, Marquez while being hit, was hitting back. The silence broke instantly, the entropy in their facial structures decreased as the crowd roared and the announcers resuscitated their form. It was a fine metaphor of the night: mutually assured destruction lending to life, not death, for either. I think most who watched agree it was special.
There is crispy soundtrack to the benevolent violence of welterweight boxing. Pacquiao and Marquez are both around 140 pounds, together just a few pounds less than Vitali Klitschko, the present heavyweight champ. If you grew up when I did, last May, then you probably think about boxing in terms of heavyweights: Holyfield, Tyson, Bowe, Lewis. Those guys were all cut, don't get me wrong, but they had muscles built over clay foundations, thick skin, muscle on meat. They could all, and did all, get fat. These welterweights aren't like that. They are the cooled granite just above the surface of their volcanic cores, and when they strike, sparks fly, rocks crumble. I mean there is bone showing on Pacquiao and Marquez. When they start to beat each other up, it looks rough. Given the way the fight went, I'll guess it feels rough too. When a champion like Pacquiao is faced with a counter puncher (a guy who earns his wage, as I said above, landing blows in tandem with blows being landed on him), even a champion knows he can't Win. Pacquiao suffered a victory, and as far as individual sports go, there is nothing more dramatic than that.
[Gosh I write a little thing on football every week, it might have been more fair to talk about Penn State, but I think boxing was the only abuse I could stomach thinking about] Cuyler Ballenger is a staff writer here at Cable Sports.
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