Comments on Pacquiao-DLH

I can't sleep, I'm watching Weeds, and I just stumbled upon Mr. Tim Kawakami's blog, Talking Points. He's writes for the SJ Mercury. He always has the information and good commentary, not to mention he updates frequently (I think everyday, I was reading it a lot during the NBA free agency period this past summer just to see what the Warriors were up to) so I think we could add this to the MYL links. Along with this post, there's a lot of stuff about the Giants missing out on Sabathia (among others) and the Niners.

Fuck you Carl, I'm gonna fuck you up this weekend.

Oh and Fuck Ruel. Just cuz.

Here it is:

The sudden aftermath: Pacquiao was handed a sitting duck
Posted by Tim Kawakami on December 6th, 2008 at 9:11 pm | Categorized as Boxing

Size? You’re talking about size? Did not matter tonight.

It usually matters in boxing, but not when Manny Pacquiao strolled to the middle of the ring, started hammering Oscar De La Hoya and didn’t stop until Oscar’s handlers threw in the towel.

I think Pacman could’ve cleaned Oscar’s clock if he was two feet tall and Oscar weighed 400 pounds. Because in rare instances, the biggest prizefights come down strictly to inner strength.

Oscar wouldn’t have beaten Pacquiao–THIS Pacquiao–at any point in De La Hoya’s career. Yes, DLH’s old. Yes, he’s at the end.

But he was never good enough to beat a fighter as smart, quick, determined and strong as Pacquiao. Never, ever. I wrote a book about Oscar, and I can tell you that he was never good enough to beat an all-time great like Pacquiao.

De La Hoya beat Chavez when Chavez was old and small. He beat Whitaker when Whitaker was old and on cocaine. He beat Vargas when Vargas was almost done. He almost beat Trinidad when Trinidad was killing himself in the wrong weight class, then Oscar lost, anyway.

Then, at 35, Oscar faced a true all-timer, in his prime, even if Pacman had to go up three weight classes to do it.

-Bad early sign: Oscar weighed in at 145, which means (to me) that he was over-worried about the weight and got TOO low.

-Worse early sign for Oscar: In the opening moments of the fight, he was tense, couldn’t pull the trigger, and when he did, he missed. He was robotic.

-End result: Pacquiao pounded and pounded, and moved, and pounded, and Oscar had no answer. Not a single answer. And when his corner wanted to quit, Oscar didn’t move a muscle to stop them. He just didn’t have the will to go on.

You know what? These have been the knocks on him his whole career and this fight only finished the argument: Oscar is a great moneymaker and the most famous non-great fighter of all-time. But not an all-time great.


De La Hoya has talent. He has rare punching accuracy. But he does not and never had what Pacquiao showed tonight: The roaring determination to kick the butt of the guy in front of him, no matter what.

That’s why DLH was such a perfect opponent for Pacquiao, it turns out. Oscar was going to go away, even against a much smaller man. If he couldn’t beat him early, Oscar was going to go away. He went away. After two rounds, that was obvious.

The rest was just formality.

Now… On Manny… Pacman is an all-time great. Now I really want to see Pacquiao-Mayweather. That’s the next real big fight, but I’m sure Oscar will be offered a fight that promoters will sell as a bigger one–maybe Trinidad, maybe Mayweather again, who knows.

That’s how it works with Oscar. He loses, and only gets bigger. This time, he lost ENORMOUSLY, and we’ll see what happens.