Quinito Henson had an interesting series of articles last week about Manny Pacquiao’s claim as the greatest fighter ever, and by “interesting,” I mean “incredibly stupid,” even by Quinito’s usual standards. He prefaced the two-part column by saying that he would compare the achievements of four of the greatest boxers of all-time against those of Manny Pacquiao, and promised at the end of the first installment that he would try to make a “logical conclusion” as to which boxer deserves to be called the greatest.

So he does list down the achievements of Sugar Ray Robinson, Muhammad Ali, Henry Armstrong, Jack Dempsey, as well as those of Pacquiao, and –surprise, surprise – he picks the Filipino pound-for-pound champion as the greatest of all time. Did he try to actually compare the achievements of each of the boxers he mentioned to come up with the logical conclusion like he promised? Of course he didn’t. Instead, he touts Pacquiao as the greatest boxer to ever live because of the latter’s display of sportsmanship toward Antonio Margarito near the end of their fight. I’m sure Quinito wasn’t being biased at all.

Then Ronnie Nathanielsz took the stupidity a notch higher by arguing in his column that anyone who didn’t think that Pacquiao was the greatest fighter of all time either hated the Philippines or hated boxing. Nathanielsz argument for Pacquiao, whom he called “the supreme example of what a fighter and a gentleman should be,” is silly enough, but it’s made even more ridiculous by the fact that the former Marcos lackey spent the weeks leading up to the fight yammering that the champion was ignoring his trainers, basically just stopping short of calling the fighter a knucklehead.

Let’s make this absolutely clear. One does not need to harbor a hatred for the Philippines to say that Pacquiao isn’t the greatest fighter of all time, one just needs to read up on boxing and get their heads out of their asses. There’s a reason that the only foreign boxing expert who even argues that Pacquiao is the best of all time is his promoter Bob Arum, the same guy who stands to make millions of dollars every time the champion fights. He’s a boxing promoter; calling him a snake oil salesman is an insult to hardworking snake oil salesmen everywhere.

Arum, after all, is the guy who came up with the “8 world titles in 8 weight divisions” BS. As Ron Borges explains:

The fight’s promoter, Bob Arum, kept insisting if Pacquiao won it would be his eighth world title, a record beyond comprehension. For that to be the case, however, Pacquiao would have had to have previously won seven world titles in seven weight classes. This he has never done, nor claimed to.

To get around this unfortunate fact, it was claimed that Pacquiao had also won world titles at 126 pounds by defeating Marco Antonio Barrera in 2003, as well as winning the Ring magazine 140-pound junior welterweight title when he stopped Ricky Hatton in two rounds in 2009. The only problem was that Barrera held no title at the time Pacquiao stopped him, and Hatton’s “title” carried no more weight than if he was carrying the Better Homes and Gardens magazine 140-pound title into the ring, magazines not being in the business of bestowing recognized world titles on boxers.

What this was all about was finding a way to claim Pacquiao was the greatest fighter in boxing history. While that is a title generally bestowed upon Sugar Ray Robinson, one can argue the case without handing a guy phantom titles.

But beyond that, anyone who knows anything at all about boxing is that world titles from alphabet soup boxing promotions are meaningless. They’re just marketing tools to add glitter to a boxing promotion, to sucker in people who wouldn’t know any better. For the most part, title belts are handed out for actual merit as much as, if not more so, for one’s willingness to pay for sanctioning fees.

There’s also the matter of Arum and co. pretty much handpicking opponents for Pacquiao, who hasn’t exactly been challenged since his narrow win against Juan Manuel Marquez in 2008. Except for Miguel Cotto, all of Pacquiao’s opponents were either past their prime and too slow (Oscar de la Hoya, Antonio Margarito) or just not very good (David Diaz, Ricky Hatton, Joshua Clottey).

As a boxing fan, I’m also annoyed by just how cavalier Pacquiao-as-the-greatest boosters are about the history of the sweet science, and how dismissive they’ve been of other boxers. Sugar Ray Leonard, for example, defeated Wilfred Benitez, Roberto Duran, Thomas Hearns, and Marvin Hagler, all of whom were better than anyone Pacquiao has ever faced. Hagler razed through the competition with a frightening combination of power, speed, and athleticism before losing a controversial decision against Leonard. Rocky Marciano, retired undefeated as the heavyweight champion of the world. Henry Armstrong fought 27 (!) times in 1937, and won all but one of those fights via knockout.

Sugar Ray Robinson, acknowledged by most experts as the greatest fighter of all time, was the perfect combination of power – he scored 109 knockouts throughout his career, and boxing historian Bert Sugar says he can throw a knockout punch while stepping backward – and grace, as sportswriter Barney Nagler described him: “He boxed as though he were playing the violin.” He won 130 of his first 132 fights, drawing once and losing once (to Jake LaMotta, the Hall of Famer whom Robert De Niro would portray in “Raging Bull”). The rest of his losses came as he continued to fight long after he was washed up.

Then there was the impact of the greatest boxers outside the ring as well. Everyone knows about Ali, a complex man who represents many things to many people. He was a touchstone for the civil rights movement in the 1960s, converting to Islam, refusing to serve in the Vietnam War and having his license suspended during the prime of his career. He remains the most compelling character in the history of boxing, if not all of sports, as he represents both a passionate, charismatic hero and an arrogant, cruel villain to different people.

There was also Joe Louis, the first black sports star accepted by mainstream white America, who carried on his shoulders not just the pressure of being heavyweight champion of the world, but also the hopes and dreams of his people. Maya Angelou, in her 1969 autobiography I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, poignantly described the impact of Louis’ fights on her and her community, as they gathered round to listen to his exploits in the ring, and how what his success and failure meant to all of them:

My race groaned. It was our people falling. It was another lynching, yet another Black man hanging on a tree. One more woman ambushed and raped. A Black boy whipped and maimed. It was hounds on the trail of a man running through slimy swamps. It was a white woman slapping her maid for being forgetful.

This might be the end of the world. If Joe lost we were back in slavery and beyond help. It would all be true; the accusations that we were lower types of human beings. Only a little higher than apes. True that we were stupid and ugly and lazy and dirty and unlucky and worst of all, that God himself hated us and ordained us to be hewers of wood and drawers of water, forever and ever, world without end.

And of course, there was the sheer ecstasy of a Joe Louis victory:

Champion of the world. A Black boy. Some Black mother’s son. He was the strongest man in the world. People drank Coca-Colas like ambrosia and ate candy bars like Christmas.

All of this isn’t to say that Pacquiao and his accomplishments are chopped liver; they’re not. His rise through the weight ranks is nothing short of amazing, in any era, and he’s certainly in the short list of the most exciting fighters of all time. His relationship with Freddie Roach is one of the best partnerships in all of sports, and the way he juggles through all of his distractions is a testament to his boxing genius. He deserves credit for the classy way he deals with his opponents before and after his fights, and his impact on the morale of all Filipinos could never be measured. When all is said and done, he’ll take his rightful place among the greats of the sport.

But people like Quinito Henson and Ronnie Nathanielsz are actually doing all of us a disservice when they meaninglessly declare him the greatest of all time. It’s the sportswriting equivalent of a hometown decision in boxing, meant only to pander to a crowd of Filipino fans who are not particularly interested in meaningful discussion. It’s terrible for everyone who loves the sport, not least because it provides more ammunition to the legions of ignorant Pinoy fans who flood boxing message boards all over the Internet with ignorant opinions stumping for their idol, making for a generally unpleasant experience for everyone involved.

More than that, however, Quinito Henson and Ronnie Nathanielsz actually do Manny Pacquiao a disservice because as their illogical arguments serve to diminish the sport, they end up diminishing Pacquiao’s accomplishments too. He is not just the greatest fighter of his generation, but he is the latest in a long, long line of great fighters in a great sport.

Like Duran, he steadily rose up the weight ranks, fearlessly taking on bigger and bigger opponents. Like Hagler, he’s a devastating force of nature in the ring. Like Robinson, he combines deadly power with graceful athleticism.

Like Joe Louis, he carries with him the hopes and dreams of his people, who live and die with each of his punches. To us, like it was to them, these were not mere boxing matches, and decades from now Filipinos will be writing odes about Pacquiao like they did about Louis.

Like Ali, he is a complicated man who is so many things to so many people, at different turns humble, arrogant, hardworking, insensitive, respectful, flippant, and so many other adjectives. Like Ali, his is a compelling, complex character, and doing him justice would require one to go beyond platitudes and clichés.

Indeed, acknowledging the greatness of those who came before him is the only way to understand the magnitude of Pacquiao’s accomplishments. Only by knowing how tall these legends are can we begin to grasp the enormity of the fact that Manny Pacquiao, our champion, stands shoulder-to-shoulder with these giants.