By Steve Janoski: When Marvin Hagler and John Mugabi fought on March 10, 1986, one man watched the match from ringside, drinking beer where the celebrities sit but still managing to hold an acute sense of interest in the bout’s result.
Hagler won the grand battle in the eleventh with a series of right hands that floored the man they called the “The Beast,” but that one observer saw that something had changed.
Later on at a post-fight party, wrote boxing scribe George Kimball, the man sat alone thinking, until he suddenly turned to actor Michael J. Fox and said, “Know what? I can beat this guy.”
That man was Sugar Ray Leonard, and the world remembers what he would go on to accomplish on one April night just over a year later.
Last night, as Manny Pacquiao utterly dominated the once-great Shane Mosley in a 12 round unanimous decision, another man was assuredly watching the fight with that same acute sense of interest. Maybe, if he was watching closely, he may have said to himself, “Know what? I can beat this guy.”
It wasn’t the career defining performance that some of us thought Pacquiao was going to have, but that’s all right— he’s had enough of those.
It was a near shutout though, a strong performance against one of the sport’s finest boxers— aged though he may be— and the latest in a string of fights that has seen the southpaw from General Santos City take the heart from his larger opponents with the strength of his will and the power of his left hand.
For Mosley, it looked like the last gasp of a crumbling legend, a final embarrassment in a career that should have ended after the Mayweather fight last spring. No fighter of Mosley’s caliber should subject themselves to the mortification of being seen as a tired 39-year-old being chased around the ring by a younger, angrier brawler, unable to pull the trigger and doing little more than desperately avoiding a knockout loss.
The game is over for Mosley, and it’s time to ring the final bell on a career that’s been as fine as any in boxing can be.
On the other end, Pacquiao, though dominant, was far from spectacular last night. Although some of this may be owed to Mosley’s unwillingness to engage, he did not look like that same vicious tornado that destroyed Antonio Margarito.
He was clearly wary of Mosley’s power, and not as willing to take chances in the early rounds against someone who he knew might be as fast as he. It wasn’t until after the false “knockdown” of Pacquiao that Mosley was gifted in the tenth round that the Filipino came out with that enraged, Roberto Duran-esque ill intent that we’ve flash in his eyes so often.
And although his defense has greatly improved, there are still holes in Pacquiao’s game— but he’s so fast that they could only be exploited by a special fighter who is still in his prime. Of course, it just so happens that the only worthwhile fight left for Pacquiao is against a man who fits that description.
The world knows that there is but one scalp left for the savage puncher to claim, and that’s Floyd Mayweather’s. If nothing else, last night proved yet again that a fight between Pacquiao and the counterpuncher-extraordinaire would be the perfect match-up of styles, the perfect match-up of men, to put boxing back in the public eye for at least one glorious night.
It would not only be that career-defining war that Leonard-Hagler became— it would be both men’s Waterloo, the last great stands of two fabled warriors whose epic battle will live forever in our memories.
All the kings of my generation have fought each other…now, it’s time for the gods to settle up.
Article posted Eastsideboxing.com on 09.05.2011
http://www.eastsideboxing.com/news.php?p=27968&more=1
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