Groundhog Prediction On Pacquiao vs. Clottey -- Eastside Boxing

Eastside Boxing

GOBBLER'S KNOB, (Groundhog Day 2010) -- At 7:25 A.M. today, Punxsutawney Phil -- the Seer of Seers, Prognosticator of all Prognosticators -- emerged from his burrow at Gobbler's Knob in Punxsutawney, Penn, and proclaimed, in his native Groundhogese, that MANNY "PacMan" PACQUIAO'S dominance over his era’s top fighters would continue with a successful defense of his World Boxing Organization welterweight title against former International Boxing Federation welterweight champion and current No. 1 contender Joshua Clottey on Saturday, March 13, at Jerry Jones’ Cowboys Stadium!

"It‘s five more weeks of training for Manny Pacquiao and four-time Trainer of the Year, World-Famous Freddie Roach," stated Phil as he shadowboxed during his annual news conference. "Manny is going to exit the ring the same way he entered it -- as world champion."

The world's most famous forecaster, wearing a Pacman headband and a T-shirt emblazoned with "100% PHILipino" on the front, went on to predict that Pacquiao would win his upcoming Congressional campaign in May.

"Manny is a modern day combination of Henry Armstrong and Theodore Roosevelt. As boxing’s only seven-division world champion, winning four different division titles in his last five fights, and all in a 21-month span, Manny speaks softly and carries a big fist. He's a Manny for all seasons! A three-time Fighter of the Year, the Boxing Writers Association of America’s Fighter of the Decade and a public servant – it’s the era of Mannyfist Destiny," exclaimed Phil.

When pressed for a definitive answer on whether Clottey had a chance to defeat Pacquiao, Phil astounded the media by answering in English.

Quoth the groundhog, "Nevermore."

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Promoted by Top Rank, in association with the Dallas Cowboys and Tecate, THE EVENT: Pacquiao vs. Clottey, World Welterweight Championship, will take place Saturday, March 13 and will be produced and distributed live on HBO Pay-Per-View®, beginning at 9 p.m. ET/6 p.m. PT.

Remaining Tickets to THE EVENT: Pacquiao vs. Clottey, priced at $700, $500, $300, $200, $100, and $50, can be purchased in-person at the Cowboys Stadium box office in Arlington, or by calling Ticketmaster at 800-745-3000. Tickets can also be purchased online at www.ticketmaster.com.

THE EVENT: Pacquiao vs. Clottey pay-per-view telecast, beginning at 9 p.m. ET/6 p.m. PT, has a suggested retail price of $49.95, will be produced and distributed by HBO Pay-Per-View® and will be available to more than 71 million pay-per-view homes. The telecast will be available in HD-TV for those viewers who can receive HD. HBO Pay-Per-View®, a division of Home Box Office, Inc., is the leading supplier of event programming to the pay-per-view industry. For Pacquiao vs. Clottey fight week updates, log on to www.hbo.com or www.toprank.com .

Source: eastsideboxing.com

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BORGES: You Can Send Margarito, Manny and Arum a Message -- The Sweet Science

By Ron Borges, The Sweet Science

The problem posed by Antonio Margarito is a complicated one and it has nothing to do with his skills inside a boxing ring and everything to do with what was found inside his hand wraps just over a year ago.

The night he sat in his locker room at the Staples Center in Los Angeles and Shane Mosley’s trainer, Nazim Richardson, noticed what paid public officials hired to ferret out such things did not must forever change how he is perceived by boxing fans and the people inside his sport.

What Richardson saw was something he didn’t like about his hand wraps, which were already in place. A dispute arose and eventually the hands were unwrapped and an illegal knuckle pad covered in what was later believed to be a plaster of paris like hardening agent were discovered. How this could have happened with the state of California having inspectors allegedly in the room when a fighter’s hands are wrapped is baffling although sadly not unexpected.

The larger issue is what happens now. Margarito and trainer Javier Capetillo were suspended for a year by the California Commission, a suspension honored throughout the United States. Although Margarito’s bombastic promoter, Bob Arum, threatened to promote Margarito in Mexico, outside the U.S. commission’s jurisdiction, and tried to claim every sentence of the Bill of Rights had been violated, in this case the fact was his guy was guilty. And if he didn’t know it he should have become a Mob lawyer rather than a member of Robert Kennedy’s Justice Department after he left Harvard Law School. Wisely, Arum allowed Margarito to serve out his suspension without boxing.

Now a year has passed and the word has come down that Arum is working to put Margarito on as the co-feature on the Manny Pacquiao-Joshua Clottey March 13 pay-per-view show at Cowboys Stadium outside of Dallas. This is a particularly interesting juxtaposition since the only reason Pacquiao is fighting Clottey that night is his own refusal to submit to effective random blood testing as part of a requirement to meet Floyd Mayweather, Jr. in a far bigger promotion on the same date.

Despite all his best excuses, Pacquiao’s refusal has left him under a cloud of doubt about whether or not he used performance enhancing drugs including EPO, the blood doping drug. Pacquiao has never tested positive and insists he’s innocent. He may well be but that cloud over him only darkened last week when Shane Mosley, who has admitted to past PED and EPO use himself, agreed to the same testing procedures Pacquiao rejected.

Now joining Pacquiao on that card, it appears, will be another fighter under a cloud, Margarito. Good thing there’s a retractable roof on Cowboys Stadium.

A journeyman named Carson Jones (24-7-1, 15 KO) has agreed to face Margarito in what will be the biggest fight of his life. He’s there, of course, because he doesn’t figure to offer up much resistance to the former welterweight champion even after a year-long layoff. Yet even Jones admitted if he didn’t see this fight as an opportunity at a living wage for once he’d be a bit reluctant to get in with Margarito after he was caught wearing loaded hand wraps.

The California Commission is quietly peeved that Margarito will not first stand before them before trying to fight in another state but they are powerless to do anything about it. Texas, which is best known for lousy judging and one-sided refereeing, seems set to approve Margarito’s re-licensing despite some odd statistics that make you wonder.

The 31 year old Margarito is 25-3 with 17 knockouts yet in most cases such figures don’t inflate as you age in large part because the competition you begin to face improves considerably as you move up in the world of boxing. Yet Margarito is 12-3 with 10 KOs in his last 15 fights, a 66 per cent KO rate. Most troubling, he destroyed first Kermit Cintron, who had little trouble with anyone else before him yet took a one-sided beating that night, and later Miguel Cotto, to whom he gave the worst beating of his life. One fight later Margarito was found with loaded hand wraps.

Although this is only circumstantial evidence up to the Mosley fight it is troubling in the extreme, especially after Mosley took him apart and was never hurt by him after his hands were re-wrapped without the brick in them.

So now he wants to come back and fight and what do you do? Luis Resto, who was found to be wearing loaded gloves the night he beat the sight and in many ways the life out of Billy Collins, Jr., went to jail for what he was found to be a party to that evening. Antonio Margarito went on a siesta for a year, admitting nothing and technically never fighting with loaded gloves because they were discovered by Richardson before the fight. Now he wants to go back to work after serving his time.

What do you do? The knee-jerk reaction is to deny him a license, essentially banning him for life, but California chose not to do that. This leaves Texas in the position of having a fighter whose suspension is over wanting to fight. They could say go back to California and deal with them first but would they have a legal right to do so?

Perhaps, but the suspension is up and there’s no question Margarito is a proficient professional prize fighter. So, it would seem they almost have no choice but to license him.

Fans however do have a choice. In this case they could stand up for fair play in boxing, something as rare as a investment banker being found to have a conscience, and refuse to buy the fight.

Send a message to Antonio Margarito that you don’t like what he did, which frankly was try to endanger the life of his opponent more than is the norm in what is a brutal sport in the best of times.

It would also send a message to Manny Pacquiao that if you are who you say you are what’s the harm in this fraudulent, steroid-ridden age of sports, in being asked to prove it?

Perhaps the Texas Boxing Commission can’t do anything but license Antonio Margarito to fight. Perhaps Arum and HBO can’t do anything but promote the next fight of boxing’s most popular practitioner, Manny Pacquiao. But boxing fans have an option they often seem to forget.

They can speak loudly with the only thing anyone in the sport hears. They can speak with their money and say this time, “Thanks but no thanks.’’

Source: thesweetscience.com

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Manny Pacquiao decides to simply fight on -- Los Angeles Times

By Bill Dwyre, Los Angeles Times

Manny Pacquiao is back in town. Boxing is like phases of the moon, and Pacquiao is in the training phase.

There will be a fight, all right. But not the one the world wanted, nor Pacquiao and his trainer, Freddie Roach.

"I wanted Mayweather bad, real bad," Roach says.

"I'm not angry at Floyd," Pacquiao says. "I just feel disappointed in his allegations."

It is a Monday afternoon at Roach's Wild Card Gym in Hollywood. The air is stale, the noise often deafening and the entire place decorum-challenged, unless you are into wrinkled 1972 boxing posters. That's as it should be. They train boxers here, not ballerinas.

Pacquiao prepares for a March 13 fight that was to be between him, recently acclaimed fighter of the decade in a vote by the U.S. Boxing Writers, and Floyd Mayweather Jr., who would tell you the boxing writers got it wrong. Now, the fight will be between Pacquiao and Joshua Clottey.

Once Pacquiao and Mayweather parted ways in the well-documented drug-testing dispute, Mayweather agreed to fight Shane Mosley on May 1 at MGM Grand in Las Vegas. Mosley has signed the contract deal, but as of Monday night, Mayweather had not.

Richard Schaefer, chief executive of Oscar De La Hoya's Golden Boy Promotions, says he expects the Mayweather signature any minute. He also says that Mosley agreed to all the Olympic-style random testing , including blood testing right up to fight time, that Pacquiao had rejected.

There are attempts from all camps to portray this fallback outcome as just fine for boxing, maybe even better.

Roach says Clottey might give fight fans a better show than the tactical, defense-minded Mayweather because "Clottey comes forward and it could become a war." Pacquiao refers to the new Dallas Cowboys Stadium, where his fight will be held in front of an expected 40,000 people, as "a beautiful place" and the Top Rank camp of Bob Arum characterizes the new venue as an important step in bringing new fans to the sport. Schaefer says that, as great as the 40-0 Mayweather is, Mosley's stunning domination of Antonio Margarito 13 months ago at Staples Center proves how dangerous he is.

Still, the loss of the Pacquiao-Mayweather mega-fight, one that could have put as much as $40 million in each fighter's pocket, hangs in the Wild Card Gym like the smell of body odor.

"In the end," Roach says, "if we had given in on the blood testing, it would have been like giving Mayweather the first round. Why would we do that?

"Manny hates needles. He said that's what cost him the first [Erik] Morales fight [March 2005]. We made a mistake on that one. Nevada has every boxer give blood once a year, and Manny hadn't done that, so we had to do it the night before the fight, just like Mayweather wanted. Manny said it made him weak for three days. Even if they took blood from him 14 days before the fight, that would have meant I lose him on key sparring days 14, 13, and 12 days out."

The Mayweather camp will read that and chuckle. Those theorizing that Pacquiao must use steroids or he would have agreed to the extra drug testing will not be moved.

There is the issue of time running out on Pacquiao's boxing career. He will run for Congress in the Philippines in mid-May. Roach has said he doesn't think Pacquiao can be a marquee boxer and a politician at the same time. Asked about that Monday, Pacquiao says, "Why not?"

There is the issue of how much these next fights could mess things up. Were Clottey to win, might not Pacquiao see that as a perfect time to retreat to politics full time? Were Mosley to win, might that not do the same thing?

"Shane came to the gym twice to ask me to let him fight Manny," Roach says. "I told him no both times, and both times for the same two reasons: First, there isn't enough money there, and second, you're too good a fighter."

There is the issue of Pacquiao's current lawsuit against the Mayweathers for defamation. Pacquiao's attorney, Daniel Petrocelli, says that the case is in federal court in Nevada, is moving at full speed and can be in trial by year's end.

But the real issue remains lost money for the boxers and lost opportunity for the sport. For now, Pacquiao-Mayweather has gone away, but probably not forever.

Pacquiao is asked whether he is so angry at Mayweather that he will never be able to bring himself to step into the ring against him.

"No, I can fight him," Pacquiao says. "I'm just not sure he ever really wanted the fight."

Roach is asked whether the fight that didn't happen has now become like a burr in his saddle.

He nods.

bill.dwyre@latimes.com

Source: latimes.com

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David Haye blasts 'boring' Ruiz ahead of title fight -- ESPN

ESPN.co.uk

David Haye has launched an attack on April opponent John Ruiz, claiming that no-one wants to fight the 'boring' Puerto Rican. The 29-year-old also guaranteed he will defend his WBA heavyweight title when the two meet at the M.E.N Arena.

"Ruiz is a dull guy and perhaps so boring even I won't be able to trash talk him," Haye said. "He has no personality and that is reflected in his marketability.

"Nobody wants him. He is a two-time world heavyweight champion that nobody wants to fight.

"But he will be good for me. I can be more gung-ho against him. I can do my usual stuff and it will come off."

Ruiz has refused to rise to Haye's incendiary comments, insisting that that he finds himself in the ideal circumstances to win a third heavyweight belt. "I've never felt so calm and comfortable," he told Primera Hora.

"I have a new trainer, a new promoter and another chance to become world champion. My style is perfect to beat Haye.

"I have to be aggressive. I've studied him a little and I know how to beat Haye."

Source: espn.co.uk

Floyd Mayweather's blueprint to restoring himself to P4P throne -- Examiner

By Michael Marley, Examiner.com

If President Obama can extend the olive branch to those Bolshevik-hating elephants, then why can't I do the same?

I'm calling a 24 moratorium on hate, a one day respite in the endless wars between the Pactoids and the Flomos, the boxing equivalent of those hillbilly rivals the Hatfields and the McCoys.

Many of the haters are exceedingly confused. One minute, I am on Bob Arum's payroll. Scroll down four comments and I am sucking up to the Golden Boys.

Truth is I am only on the Examiner payroll and why would I hate Floyd Mayweather, anyway? Besides his super skills, Mayweather is the salt to Manny Pacquiao's pepper, the milk to the Manny coffee.

I want to go back to my theme of yesterday and reassert, first, that Mayweather's voluntary retirement was ill advised and he suffers from it because he left the stage and the Pound for Pound emperor's throne empty, a vacuum which the Pinoy Idol quickly filled.

By contrast, look at the super middleweights with the Showtime tournament. When it started, the world's best super middleweight was the “retired” Joe Calzaghe. Like Mayweather, he too appeared on a TV dance show, the UK version known as “Strictly Come Dancing.”

Suffice to say, Cazlaghe and his Russian moll were not twinkletoes on the telly, neither one making anyone flash back to Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers.

Reminds me of the one dollar per week my mother used to make me drag my little brother to in the Allston Brighton section of Boston. Once we mastered “shuffle, ball, change,” I started taking little bro to the King of Pizza where two bucks was worth four freshly made slices as I recall. Not only that, you got a free show with the pizzaman kneading the dough and then trying to through it through the ceiling.

But I disgress.

Point is, that no super middleweight has taken Welsh Dragon Calzaghe's place at the 168 poound pinnacle, all the more reason I see Joe returning to the ring when the Showtime winner is crowned.

Mikkel Kessler has stumbled, Jermain Taylor has retired and Andre Ward may continue to shine as a possible supernova. Perhaps King Artie Abraham punches his way to the tourney title.

None of them could beat Calzaghe today, tomorrow or next month. It's simple to deduce that Cazlaghe, even as a layabout, remains king of the super middles.

Mayweather's situation is vastly different because his throne was occupado when he deigned to come back to the sport.

In my helpful mode, and whislt extending the hand of hood, good, brotherhood to you Flomos, here's how Mayweather could regain the P4P throne:

1.By beating Pacman to a pulp! Doh!

2.If Joshua Clottey can shock the world by shocking Pacquiao on March 13 in Dallas.

3. By not just outpointing Shane Mosley May 1, but by beating him thoroughly in an entertaining fashion which, at age 32 and given his natural inclination, I do not know that Money May is capable of accomplishing.

4 .By saying the hell with it, and calling Tall Paul Williams out either at 147 or 154 pounds, L'il Floyd's choice of weights. Mayweather wouldn't even need his Golden Boys to make it, he could just tell adviser Al Haymon to call himself.

5. By dropping all the namecalling and the sarcasm and showing his likeable side to the media and thus to the public more often. Mayweather's villain role pays well, I know, but he could shut it off once in a while.

6. If Pacman looks pedestrian against Clottey but wins, it helps Mayweather's arguments but I think the public will cut Manny some slack if he has any sort of an “off night” after his recent sizzling showings.

7. By explaining what was scientific or magical about the 14 days before the fight random blood test for Manny. Oops, I forgot. That was a sham to begin with so it cannot be logically explained.

There's your blueprint, Floyd. Can you follow it or do you need a GPS?

Btw, Floyd you don't have to keep saying “thank you” to the lady on the GPS in your Maybach.

She is just like all those Pacquiao fans, she can't hear you.

(mlcmarley@aol.com)

Source: examiner.com

Pacquiao Is BWAA Fighter Of The Decade -- The Sweet Science

The Sweet Science

If there was any doubt that Manny Pacquiao is the biggest star of his sport, it was put to rest by members of the Boxing Writers Association of America. By an overwhelming margin, Pacquiao took home not only the BWAA's newly named " Sugar Ray Robinson Fighter of the Year" award, but went one better by also winning "Fighter of the Decade" honors. For Pacquiao, it was his third BWAA "Fighter of the Year" award, tying him with Muhammad Ali and Evander Holyfield for the most in the history of the organization.

Right by Pacquiao's side as always was his trainer Freddie Roach, who won a record setting fourth "Trainer of the Year" award. Roach says that this award gives him special satisfaction in that it is named after his mentor Eddie Futch.

Although the Juan Manuel Marquez - Juan Diaz fight took place early in the year, it stayed fresh in the mind of the BWAA electorate. This tremendous brawl that saw Marquez win by a ninth round stoppage was voted "Fight of the Year." This award has recently been renamed in honor of Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier who engaged in three fights, two of which were of legendary status.

The John F.X. Condon award for "Long and Meritorious Service" was won by veteran sportswriter Jerry Izenberg. A former BWAA Fleischer award winner (1978) for "Excellence in Boxing Journalism," Izenberg covered the boxing beat for decades for the Newark Star Ledger. Since he's relocated to Nevada, Izenberg's pace has not slowed. Jerry still writes about the sport he loves, giving his readers an inside perspective as only he can.

Sadly, boxing lost Alexis Arguello last year, but the goodwill that the former great champion spread while alive was rewarded. Arguello (posthumously) will be honored with the Marvin Kohn "Good Guy" award.

The odds of there being a tie in any one category are slim, but for it to happen two years in a row in the same one category is very unusual. However, that is what has occurred as broadcaster Nick Charles, and former heavyweight contender George Chuvalo shared the lead for the Bill Crawford award for "Perseverance in Overcoming Adversity." The cases of both have been well documented. Needless to say, both serve as inspirations. Last year it was Genaro Hernandez and George Kimball who tied.

Joe Tessitore has been the lead blow by blow announcer at ESPN for the last 10 years. His outstanding work has been recognized by the BWAA. Tessitore is this year's winner of the Sam Taub award as "Broadcaster of the Year."

Previously the BWAA's Liebling committee (George Kimball chairman) announced F.X. Toole as the winner of this year's award for "Outstanding Boxing Writing."

Awards yet to be determined are the Fleischer award for "Excellence in Boxing Journalism" and the Farley award for "Honesty and Integrity in Boxing."

The 85th annual BWAA awards dinner is scheduled to take place in New York City, on June 11, 2010. Pacquiao's attendance at the event already has been confirmed. The following evening there will be a major show at Madison Square Garden.

Source: thesweetscience.com