By Paula Duffy, Examiner.com
Manny Paquiao almost pitched a perfect shutout except that two judges gave Joshua Clottey what the ring announcer called a "courtesy round".
It might have been one of the finest moments in the ring for the Filipino fighter. He won 34 out of 36 rounds on the scorecards of the three judges on Saturday night.
He never stopped presuming that his opponent would awake from what appeared to be a self-induced coma.
Pacquiao racked up points while throwing more than twice the ring average for punches by a welterweight and didn't suffer from fatigue or the emotional frustration level that HBO's Emanuel Steward kept telling us about.
Manny just fought as if he had an opponent who was interested in engaging with him or who had looked at film and formed a strategy that was unique to this particular contest.
He kept executing his own plan, formulated with his zen master, trainer Freddie Roach and must have wondered when Joshua Clottey would take the bait thrown at him by his own trainer, Lenny DeJesus.
As the fight wore on, DeJesus insisted his fighter take chances, even going so far as to tell him that he hadn't won a single round as the fight neared its conclusion.
The shaking of Clottey's head as he refused his corner's entreaties to fight and uncover his face said everything the audience needed to know. No, it said, I am not going to expose myself to him and allow him to beat me to a pulp.
Max Kellerman of HBO piped up periodically to tell his colleagues that they shouldn't have been surprised at Clottey's tactics or lack thereof. "Who did you expect?" asked Kellerman, "This is Clottey."
It wasn't until the eighth round of the scheduled 12 that it was clear to all, including Manny Pacquiao that the other man in the ring had given up.
That's when the already famous cries of "Bang, bang, bang" came out of the mouth of ring announcer Jim Lampley who punctuated a Pacquiao barrage that went unanswered by Clottey.
If Clottey had been fearful of the furious fists of Pacquio up to that point there was no reason for him to then allow the beating to begin after all hope was gone for him to win a decision.
DeJesus had been smug about his supposed insider knowledge of the Pacman, learned as he tells the story, from attending to Manny as a cut man in his corner. What he couldn't have expected was a fighter that seized up like a car engine that finally dies after too much mileage.
But Manny Pacquiao knows the value of every pay-per-view dollar. He knew we wanted a fight, a show and an entertaining evening. He gave it to us despite the unwillingness of his opponent to play nice.
The ring announcers took pains to say that for his troubles he took more punches and hard ones to the face than he had in his previous three or four fights combined. And he looked like it.
No one was wrong about the power of Clottey's punches. He could do damage but forfeited that potential to escape total annhilation.
He now becomes a joke rather than the mere disappointment he had been seen as after his inability to put away Miguel Cotto. Nonetheless, he'll be given the chance to fight again when he explains that anyone but Pacquiao will see the "real" Joshua Clottey.
Anyone want to bet on the purse for his next fight? Minuscule in comparison to Saturday night in Dallas, in front of the third largest boxing audience in history.
Now Clottey can return to Ghana and see his 11 year old daughter who he says he likes to keep away from his boxing profession. We all now know why.
Source: examiner.com
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