Fire Quinito rounds up all the essential reading for the Manny Pacquiao-Miguel Cotto superfight, so you can save your energy to argue whether Amanda really deserved to be sole survivor.



Tim Starks, The Queensberry Rules: “I couldn’t dream it any better, I really couldn’t. For the first time since I can remember, a mega-fight is a mega-fight on the merits, and I don’t have to make any excuses, things like ‘Dear non-boxing fans, please know that if you watch this fight and it sucks it’s not representative of the sport as a whole.’ No, Nov. 14’s 145-pound bout between Manny Pacquiao and Miguel Cotto is the best of both worlds. Purists love it, but at the same time, the New York Times is giving boxing some rare coverage and even the U.S. Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, is making predictions about the winner.”

Martin Rogers, Yahoo! Sports: “The problem Pacquiao has is that to many he is no longer a person or a fighter, but an ideological statement. It is an ideal of perfection that he can never hope to live up, to be everything to everyone. It must be remembered he is a human being, a fighter, from simple roots, not a magician. All the magazine covers (he last week graced the cover of Asian Time), Nike commercials and even lyrics about him in a Jay-Z rap song can’t change that. In the Philippines, the small signs of a backlash are already there. Some fondly remember Pacquiao the out-and-out fighter, the simple man of simple taste, for whom the ring was all that mattered.”

Greg Bishop, The New York Times: “Pacquiao craves companionship, seeking comfort in numbers. He said he likes good company, which explains why he sleeps in the condo while the sprawling house he owns nearby sits mostly empty, leaves in the pool, ants in the kitchen. Confidants believe this stems from his childhood, when he grew up so poor in the Philippines that his younger brother, Bobby, described each day as ‘survival mode.’ The path to reclaimed youth includes all of the activities Pacquiao missed, like darts, billiards, basketball and marathon karaoke sessions.”

Steve Kim, Max Boxing: “There is always the lingering question of whether Pacquiao is distracted or not. It’s become a permanent storyline of any fight he participates in. But (Freddie) Roach, says with a grin,‘Y’know what? We like drama. We have enough in our lifetime that we must like it. Otherwise, we would change things. We’ve always had problems, there’s always something going in Camp Pacquiao.’”

Dan Wetzel, Yahoo! Sports: “Roach’s strengths as a trainer are numerous, but two stand out. One is his dedication to teaching the game. He isn’t just about preparing a fighter for a single fight (although that’s part of it). It’s about long-range construction also. The second is that through the education process, his blunt honesty and unwavering dedication to the sport creates a trust with his fighters that can’t be shaken. Here’s a guy with a serious disease, pouring everything into them – he has no wife and few outside interests. One feeds into the other. The more he teaches, the more they trust. The more they trust, the more teachable they become.”

Bob Velin, USA Today: “Roach said he has a ‘Plan A and B. Either (Cotto’s) going to use his strength and come forward and show us he's a bigger, stronger guy, or he'll try to become (Juan Manuel) Marquez and become a counterpuncher, and you can't become someone else in an eight-week period. I'm ready for whatever he brings.’

Kevin Iole, Yahoo! Sports: “The popular opinion clearly favors Pacquiao, but Cotto is undaunted. ‘What Pacquiao did in the past and who he’s beaten doesn’t matter to me,’ Cotto said. ‘He’s not fighting De La Hoya or Hatton. He’s fighting Miguel Cotto. This is different.’ Cotto has an argument of his own to make, though few have advanced it. He’s defeated Zab Judah, Shane Mosley and Joshua Clottey and on paper, those wins look better than victories over the slow and plodding Diaz, an aging and dehydrated De La Hoya and a vastly overrated Hatton.