NOW THAT the buzz attendant to Manny Pacquiao's latest butt-kicking success has risen to the level of a thousand angry hornets' nests, the next logical step for the Filipino Flash is to proceed to a clear-the-decks megafight with Floyd Mayweather Jr., the other claimant to the unofficial but highly prestigious title of world's best pound-for-pound boxer.
"The money we are talking about is astronomical," HBO Sports president Ross Greenburg said shortly after Pacquiao (50-3-2, 38 KOs) wrested the WBO welterweight championship from Puerto Rico's Miguel Cotto (34-2, 27 KOs) on an emphatic, 12th-round technical knockout Saturday night at Las Vegas' MGM Grand.
"This fight has to happen. It happened about five times in the '80s. Think of Ray Leonard and Thomas Hearns. That's the type of fight this is. This should be our Super Bowl. It will break records."
Or maybe not. It's impossible for a proposed fight to break records if it never takes place, and there is at least a possibility that Pacquiao-Mayweather will remain stuck "on a bridge to nowhere," according to a man who knows just how far the distance can be from what fight fans want and what they don't always get.
Rock Newman is best remembered as the manager of former heavyweight champion Riddick Bowe. They made millions of dollars together, and Bowe's epic trilogy with Evander Holyfield remains the finest three-act passion play between big men since Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier pushed one another to the limits of human endurance in the ring. But Bowe never swapped punches with Mike Tyson, his homeboy from the Brownsville section of Brooklyn, nor with Lennox Lewis, who beat him in the 1988 super heavyweight gold-medal bout at the Seoul Olympics. Each of those scraps would have done huge business.
"From a financial standpoint, you certainly would have wanted those fights to be made," Newman said of Bowe-Tyson and Bowe-Lewis. "But there are circumstances why fights that make sense don't happen. Nothing is automatic in boxing. Sometimes you wind up on a bridge to nowhere, and that bridge never gets crossed."
Mayweather (40-0, 25 KOs), who is coming off a unanimous decision over Juan Manuel Marquez on Sept. 19, has made no secret of his dislike of his former promoter, Top Rank CEO Bob Arum, who just happens to be Pacquiao's promoter. "Money" insists that he won't throw down with "Pac-Man" unless Arum recuses himself from the promotion, which won't happen, or if he gets anything less than a 60-40 split in his favor, which also won't happen. It is Mayweather's contention that since he's undefeated and Pacquiao isn't, he deserves a larger slice of what figures, even in the throes of a recession, to be a very substantial pie.
Newman said it is his experience that even the nastiest personal conflicts tend to be resolved when the stakes rise high enough.
"Bob Arum, who can be maddening to deal with, is a financially practical person," Newman said. "His regard for the bottom line would supersede any of that other stuff with Mayweather. Sure, there'd be a lot of posturing back and forth, but at the end of the day both sides are too sensible to let past squabbles get in the way of doing what needs to be done. That's what I think, anyway."
Count Newman among those who are amazed by the zooming popularity of Pacquiao, a liftoff not seen in boxing since the the mid- to late-1980s, when Tyson was knocking a succession of petrified opponents colder than a Siberian winter. In his last three outings, the dynamic southpaw - whose devastation of Cotto enabled him to become the first fighter to win titles in seven weight classes - has blown through Oscar De La Hoya, Ricky Hatton and now Cotto.
"If anyone claims they could have predicted [Pacquiao's global superstardom], they don't know what they're talking about," said Newman, who allows that Pacquiao has won over fight fans around the world because "there is a purity to his savagery" and he has "a singular, intense, destructive focus."
Asked to pick a winner between Pacquiao and Mayweather, though, Newman still leans toward the Grand Rapids, Mich., native.
"I've observed Floyd from the time he was a 4-year-old kid hitting the speed bag," Newman said. "His boxing IQ is greater than anyone else's. I'm not saying his skills, power or any of that are best, but his boxing IQ is. He knows everything about range, about angles, about how to hit and not get hit. As an in-the-ring intellectual, he would figure out a way to win."
Punch lines
The Miguel Cotto-Manny Pacquiao replay will be televised by HBO at 10 p.m. Saturday. If you weren't a Pacquiao fan before, you will be after seeing him systematically disassemble the very capable Cotto . . . North Philadelphia's Teon Kennedy (13-0-1, 5 KOs) bids for the vacant USBA super bantamweight title when he takes on Francisco Rodriguez (14-2, 8 KOs), of Chicago by way of his native Mexico, in the 12-round main event Friday night at the Blue Horizon . . . Also on Friday, Camden light-heavyweight Prince Badi Ajamu (27-3, 15 KOs) takes on Daniel Judah (23-4-3, 10 KOs) at the Trump Taj Mahal in Atlantic City . . . The next installment of Showtime's "Super Six" super middleweight series is set for Saturday night in Oakland as WBA 168-pound champ Mikkel Kessler (42-1, 32 KOs), of Denmark, rumbles with Oakland's Andre Ward (20-0, 13 KOs), the only American gold medalist at the 2004 Athens Olympics.
Send e-mail to fernanb@phillynews.com
Source: philly.com
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