Howdy Folks…Let’s just get right into it, okay?
Rant #1: Thank God we had a nice, definitive win on Saturday. Sergio Martinez and Paul Williams are both credits to the sport and deserve bigger followings than what they get. Hopefully, with the HBO Free Preview Weekend and the replay of Pacquiao-Margarito, a massive audience got exposed to one of the sport’s classiest fighters, Sergio Martinez.
All this serves as a lesson: Good matchmaking produces good, memorable results; Bad matchmaking produces crap. Mismatches and cynical promotions will kill the sport faster than any sanctioning body or greedy promoter.
With Marquez-Katsidis, Froch-Abraham, Khan-Maidana, Perez-Agbeko, and Darchinyan-Mares (among others) to close out the year, we’re almost guaranteed a satisfying finish to a dismal 2010.
Rant #2: If I have to read one more misinterpretation of Bernard Hopkins’ quote regarding Manny Pacquiao and African American fighters, my head will explode. I can’t honestly tell if writers are feigning ignorance or if they really are clueless, but if there is an “African American style,” it would be characterized as slick, fluid, defensively sound, and based heavily on timing and speed. It’s no mystery.
Rant #3: I almost didn’t go ahead with this last rant because I feel sorry for the guy and I don’t want to come off like I’m picking on him. In the end, though, my own love of the sport pushed me forward.
Dennis “D’Source” Guillermo writes for Examiner.com and he’s a known Manny Pacquiao cheerleader/groupie who is making a career out of raking in change from the Examiner’s penny per pageview policy. He’s one of a growing crop of writers who put out Pacquiao pap just to collect penny clicks from feverishly devoted Pacquiao fans who spend all day and night searching for stories about their idol.
It’s a lucrative business for those unconcerned with integrity and willing to deal with the mind-numbing boredom of writing about one fighter all day, every day.
All of this would be fine if not for the fact that these penny-hungry bottom feeders produce A LOT of material and occasionally some of it squirts out into the mainstream. The misinformation and/or flat-out lies from these “writers” serve to further cloud the already murky waters of boxing journalism.
Guillermo, like a lot of his ilk, definitely subscribes to the theory that, when in doubt– make shit up.
I have to admit that I’m a bit of a fan of his at this point. Finding the factual errors in almost each and every one of his articles is almost like finding the prize at the bottom of a Cracker Jack box. As such, I don’t mind him getting a few pennies at my expense. It amuses me to no end…until I realize that for everyone who is chuckling along with me, there’s another who is relying on “D’Source to inform him about what’s really happening. Therein lies the problem.
Here’s just a brief example of what I’m talking about…a few snippets from an inspired 3-part “epic:”
…Mayweather did require Shane Mosley to take the test, but it was later on discovered that the cutoff was 18 days prior to the fight…
Guillermo leads the readers to believe that Mayweather negotiated a contract where Mosley would have a cut-off date for blood testing. This is patently untrue. Both fighters agreed to RANDOM testing, which means that blood could be drawn from them at any point during the build up to the fight. The actual date of the last sample drawn is not important because it’s the random element of the testing that keeps suspected fighters from juicing. The initial source of this misinformation was Philboxing.com and Guillermo’s fellow Pacquiao groupie– Ronnie Nathanielsz. And who was Nathanielsz’s source for this info? According to the article, it was none other than Bob Arum.
Then Pacquiao moved up to 147 and up to beat Oscar Dela Hoya, Miguel Cotto, Joshua Clottey and Antonio Margarito. There’s definitely an elite black fighter at 147, unfortunately he doesn’t want to fight Pacquiao. The other names are Shane Mosley and if you truly want to make an argument, Paul Williams. Mosley would’ve been an interesting fight for Pacquiao after the former defeated Margarito. This did not happen however, thanks in large to one of the reasons why Pacquiao-Mayweather is so hard to make. Mosley was with Golden Boy Promotions and Pacquiao is under their rival Top Rank. End of story.
Um, no. Not the end. Golden Boy and Mosley tried like hell to make the fight with Pacquiao, even compromising down to 142 lbs. Team Pacquiao never seriously entertained the idea, opting to go “in house” instead. Golden Boy would also quickly and easily make the third Marquez-Pacquiao fight if Top Rank expressed interest. While there is genuine dislike between Top Rank and Golden Boy, it has never interfered with either company’s willingness to work with one another if it made good business sense. Mayweather-Pacquiao fell apart over the blood testing, pure and simple. End of story.
I just really wanted to call out Max Kellerman for his statements during the Pacquiao-Margarito fight saying that Pacquiao has not fought any other guy that was in his prime other than Juan Manuel Marquez who incidentally gave him the toughest fights of his life. I’m confused. When do we say a fighter is in his prime? Is it age? Because the last time I checked, Cotto is younger than Pacquiao, while Margarito is a year older and Clottey is older by 2 years. Marquez was older than any of those 3 fighters when he last fought Pacquiao. Marquez is 37 right now…Pacquiao also first defeated Barrera back when the latter was 29-years-old and after losing to Pacquiao, went on a 6-fight winning streak against the likes of Morales, Juarez and became the lineal champ at 130. What gives? Do these so-called boxing experts simply have selective memory? Are they simply incompetent and need to do more research? Or are they simply biased and full of shit?
When do we say a fighter is in his prime? No mystery here: When he’s at the height of his career, celebrating several quality wins in succession, not on the downside after suffering a career-defining, career-threatening loss, as has been the case with 10 of Pacquiao’s last 14 opponents. To what degree is the issue, but what Kellerman said was absolutely right and he deserves to be applauded for having the guts to say that while Lampley is “Bang…Bang…Banging” away and Merchant is soiling his Depends.
And what about Mayweather? When has he fought a top fighter in his prime that’s bigger than him?
Not to play the role of Mayweather defender, although I’ll be classified as such, but Mayweather has been the naturally smaller man throughout his career, except for his fights with Marquez and Hatton.
I do understand what Hopkins is feeling. It’s hard to watch some guy out of nowhere dominate a sport that was once ruled by your race. There’s a reason why black people don’t talk about it out aloud and it’s not because they lack the balls to do so. It’s simply borderline stupid. The problem is, African-Americans have shied away from boxing in favor of the NBA and the NFL.
Hopkins, in his interview, was talking about Manny Pacquiao and those fighters around 147 who had the best chance to beat him. I doubt that boxing is losing a lot of 147 lb. African Americans to the NBA and NFL.
And from another article, where Guillermo addresses the Robert Garcia/Parkinson’s video story:
The day prior, I did a phone interview with Garcia wherein he said that it was just part of their psy-war with Roach and that it was simply a joke directed only specifically at Roach and not people suffering from PD and that it wasn’t even supposed to go public.
The hard-nosed reporter in “D’Source” allowed Garcia to get away with saying that the mocking was merely the product of a “psy-war” between both camps and then, in the same sentence, insist that it was meant to be a private tape, anyway…Excuse me, if it was meant to be private, then how could it be intended as psychological warfare against the other side?
There are plenty more fun reads and flabbergasting mistakes to be found on Guillermo’s Examiner Page. A fun game is to keep track of a week’s worth of flubs and then see if he can break that record the following week.
See ya next Monday…drop me a line at paulmagno@theboxingtribune.com if you want to share something truly “rant-worthy.”
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