By Bart Barry-
Saturday on UNLV’s campus or thereabouts Filipino senator Manny Pacquiao unanimously decisioned American welterweight titlist Jessie Vargas in a good match that proved Pacquiao’s fighting class has not dissipated fast as the welterweight division’s. Vargas was a top-10 guy at 147 pounds whom Pacquiao beat conclusively without exerting more than 45 seconds of any round, the same way Pacquiao conclusively beat Timothy Bradley, a top-5 guy at 147 pounds, in April.
Pacman’s fighting capacities have not diminished nearly quick as American interest in his capacities – as represented by purse guarantees – have: His reflexes and savagery are down about 20-percent from where they were before Mayweather while his Saturday purse guarantee was about 20-percent of what it was before Mayweather. Of course an 80-percent paycut from $20 million still makes Pacquiao what American conservatives call a “job creator” and Pacquiao at 80-percent remains very much better than other titlists in the welterweight division though nothing close to enough to beat Floyd Mayweather till Money’s 45th birthday.
Pity that Manny cannot be remanded to a cryogenic lab till 2021, then, especially if greed and desperation force a rematch of the Fight to Ruin Boxing which they will if Manny and his promoter have any say because Manny’s promoter has nary a better option – whatever talent Bud Crawford has, whatever doggedness Timothy Bradley maintains, neither guy has more than a city much less a state much less a country much less a global region he captivates or might monetize.
The preamble of the moment, the consensus throatclearing, goes something like: Pacquiao, while not nearly the man he was in his prime, is still very good. That’s about half right. Pacquiao actually is much nearer the man he was in his prime than we say he is; what has changed is our perception – our memories and our expectations and our tolerance and ourselves generally.
That’s a bold statement, Mr. Barry, are you being dumbly controversial to court traffic in the spirit of contemporary politics?
Yes! actually no. I watched the Russian rebroadcast of Pacquiao-Vargas on Sunday morning (pro tip: putting the words ““???? ???” in front of your YouTube search criteria for most any match gets you an early rebroadcast without perception-skewing commentary to suffer) and then, ready for a mindbending trip through the fourth dimension, I called up Pacquiao-Morales 1, a match Pacquiao lost, sure, but a Pacquiao 11 1/2 years younger and 15 pounds smaller and presumably quicker than today’s iteration. What I expected was the nonlinear thing that happens when you juxtapose any heavyweight title match of the 1990s with a Wlad Klitschko fight – wait, you mean heavyweights once fought with bent knees and courage? (OK, that’s not fair: Klitschko fought his courage most every title defense) – but that’s not what I got.
Pacquiao was more explosive and frankly weirder back in 2005 but he didn’t have fractionally the wiles he has today, and yes, that’s allowing for the feral qualitative disparity between Erik Morales and Jessie Vargas. Pacquiao’s head movement is perhaps the largest difference between then and now and that’s a tribute to Pacquiao’s latterday conditioning. Head movement is rarely a matter of moving one’s head; effective head movement is at least pendulous upperbody movement but best when born of the feet and knees and thighs. Eleven years ago Pacquiao windshield-wipered his hands back and forth in lieu of moving his head and Morales hit him often and hard with the Mexican’s worldclass jab.
Part of what doomed Vargas, aside from trying to do what Juan Manuel Marquez did without understanding why Marquez thought to do it and therefore a hundred microscopic adjustments of both physique and character Marquez learned to make (ain’t nothing like the real thing, Jes-sie) was Vargas’ inability to jab at uncertainty after Pacquiao snatched his confidence in round 2. Nearly no one can jab confidently at uncertainty – if there were anything natural about it the double-end bag’d not exist – and Pacquiao’s creation and maintenance of defensive uncertainty (offensively he’s been a wildcard his whole life) is one sure source of his longevity.
And even at 80-percent Pacquiao is fast in an elite way today’s fighters are not. There are quick hands aplenty out there, Showtime Sports, formerly known as The PBC, now bursts with them, but that’s different from being fast in a way that instantly closes space as Pacquiao does in yards, not inches. While Pacquiao had seen a few dozen Vargases in his career, Saturday it was clear in the match’s second half Vargas’d not before seen a Pacquiao, and some combination of fatigue and inactive offensive imagination and hyperactive defensive imagination (anxiety about consequences) kept Vargas’ hands at home while Senator Pacquiao, ever a vote-counter, did barely more than he needed do to win each round.
Never again will Pacquiao be quick to the breach as he was the night Marquez pistonstroked him, in part because every opponent now chants “jab-feint / leapback / jab / cross” through every trainingcamp, in part because Pacquiao no longer thrills quite so much at the fray, and in part because there’s no need. Today Senator Pacquiao resides in a curious yet lucrative space: He’s good enough, still, to unify the welterweight division and not nearly good enough to win more than two rounds against Mayweather.
At least it’s lucrative.
Bart Barry can be reach via Twitter @bartbarry
