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The Road to Dallas: Does anyone believe the hype?

Fire Quinito’s coverage of the upcoming bout between Manny Pacquiao and Joshua Clottey continues with a review of The Road to Dallas from our special guest critic Alekos Orendain. So does Clottey stand a chance? Read on and find out.

The fight's a little less than a week away and even now it seems that it's gone under the radar for the majority of the 2 months since the fight was announced. Mostly it's been overshadowed by the bad press from the fallout of the shitstorm that was the Manny Pacquiao-Floyd Mayweather fight negotiations, the back and forth taunting that’s still happening between both camps and more importantly the other big fight that resulted from this cancellation: Mayweather versus Shane Mosley.

It seems even HBO decided to give this fight a back seat on the promotional stage as well when they decided not to make a 24/7 show for the fight, instead downgrading it to a 30 minute special in its feature, The Road to Dallas. I can’t really blame HBO for doing that though, like many people I know, I'm finding it a bit hard to get really excited about this fight. For some it may be the disappointment of the Mayweather fight not pushing through. For others, Joshua Clottey is simply a completely unknown fighter to them and therefore they feel he won’t pose any threat to Pacquiao. I was hoping that watching Dallas would provide me with enough insight to find out just how much I need to worry about this fighter from Ghana. By the end of the episode, I still found myself sitting on the fence.

The show itself was like a condensed version of 24/7. Obviously after 12 episodes of 24/7 featuring Pacquiao, there’s really not much about him to feature anymore. But it’s always fun watching clips of him beat up de la Hoya, Hatton and Cotto while various boxing journalists sing his praises so I’m not complaining. The negotiations for the fight with Mayweather were quickly discussed and glossed over, making it seem much less ugly than it really was, and again I’m not complaining. It still sickens me how the whole thing was handled. The two things that did interest me though were what they would show about Pacquiao’s relatively unknown opponent. Joshua “The Grandmaster” Clottey and how amazing it would be to watch the fight live in the ultra high tech Dallas Cowboys stadiums. I mean seriously, who wouldn’t want to watch a fight that has a high def screen the size of half a football field. You’d be able to see every single hair of Manny’s pornstache on that beast of a screen.

As for Joshua Clottey, I don’t really know much about him but I was able to watch his controversial fight with Pacquiao’s latest victim Miguel Cotto. It was a good exciting fight that personally I thought Clottey won. But it seems Clottey is the kind of fighter who always seems to come up short in his biggest fights. Against Cotto, I thought he was leading going into the last few rounds. But when Cotto started running, Clottey took his foot of the gas and didn’t even try to pursue or finish off the hurt and bleeding Cotto. Instead he just stood back and allowed the Boricuan fighter to steal the last few rounds. Cotto didn’t win that fight, Clottey lost it.

You wouldn’t think that though when watching the HBO feature. In the Dallas, they showed a fighter who grew up in a tough, poor area of Ghana where fighting presented half of the career opportunities available. You’d think the kind of fighter you’d get from that kind of neighborhood would be the real aggressive warrior types like Tyson or Pacquiao. But instead in Clottey we get a defensive counter puncher whose biggest asset is having a really tough defense to crack.

So like I said, I was hoping that the show would help me decide if I should be worried or not. On the one hand, you have this really big welterweight who according to many did enough to win the fight Cotto, who's skilled enough to have never lost decisively to anybody. Skilled enough to make you think he could be one of the elite fighters in the sport if only he could utilize is considerable boxing arsenal to the fullest. A tough fighter who has never been really hurt in the ring and has never been stopped.

On the other hand, you have a fighter who has a tendency to take his foot of the gas and finds ways to lose fights. A whiner who tends to act a lot during fights. A fighter who lacks that killer instinct that Pacquiao has in spades. A fighter who frankly seems a bit too star struck about fighting the best fighter in the sport today and giddy about getting his biggest payday ever. A fighter who’s trainer is stuck in Ghana because he was denied a US Visa and is now being trained by Pacquiao’s former cut man, Lenny de Jesus, who said that he doesn’t need to watch tapes of Pacquiao’s fights because he’s already seen Pacquiao train before. Which is a seriously dumb idea if you take into account the fact that the last time he saw Pacquiao train was for the 1st Morales fight back in 2005. I guess Lenny missed the part where everyone is saying that Pacquiao has improved by leaps and bounds since then. But hey, maybe he’s right. He even said that he had the “key” to beating Pacquiao, and since the guy has been a locksmith for over 40 years, who knows? Maybe he really does. And maybe Bobby Pacquiao will become the next best pound-for-pound fighter in the world.

Luckily for me, I’m a bit of a pessimist when it comes to these fights and my indecision about this fight is making me lean more towards the school of thought that Clottey will be all that he can be in this fight (no thanks to his trainer) and give Pacquiao a real tough time or even pull a huge upset. Because believe me, if we get the Clottey that fought Cotto, I firmly believe that the fighter from the mean streets of Ghana doesn’t stand a chance and Freddie Roach will be right again, Pacquiao by KO in the 6th or 7th.
Posted by alekos on March 12, 2010 at 02:35 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)
Tags: Boxing, Joshua Clottey, Manny Pacquiao

Punch-Drunk: Pac-mania is back, but so is Pac-music



A few weeks ago, I filed a column for Yahoo’s Ringside with Manny site killing pound-for-pound champion Manny Pacquiao for his awful singing. The very next day, the site bannered the video above of Pacquiao doing a song number, exclusively for Yahoo’s cameras. A couple of days later, Manny was back on Jimmy Kimmel Live, turning the show into a videoke session.

Meanwhile, my story was posted a couple of weeks ago, but wasn’t linked from the front page up until this week.

Speaking of which, my Pisay batchmate and hotshot NCAA announcer Toff Rada also dissected Pacquiao’s singing skills – Toff apparently has prior weird experience with “Nothing’s Gonna Change My Love for You” so he knows whereof he speaks – as well as the champ’s chances in the ring against Joshua Clottey. And yes, it’s telling that Clottey’s name wasn’t mentioned in this post until the second to the last sentence.
Posted by jaemark on March 11, 2010 at 15:21 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)
Tags: Boxing, Joshua Clottey, Manny Pacquiao, Video

Manny Pacquiao rocks out at Jimmy Kimmel Live once more

At some point, someone’s going to have to tell Manny Pacquiao that people are really laughing at him, not with him. Case in point: The box-office performance of his movie Wapakman.

For now though, we get to enjoy this:







Don’t worry though, Pac-man. You’re still my idol.
Posted by jaemark on March 5, 2010 at 14:18 | Comment (1) | Trackback (1)
Tags: Boxing, Manny Pacquiao, Video

Nonito Donaire family drama, starring Jericho Rosales

I mentioned before that I laugh at the most inappropriate things, so when I saw the latest chapter of Nonito Donaire Jr.’s feud with his father on Jude Turcuato’s blog, I cracked up. It’s a serious matter, and I shouldn’t really be laughing but I can’t help it. Jude’s somber take on it is appropriate, and perhaps you should read that first.

Now, I’m assuming you’re still here and you want to find out what’s so funny. First, I guess we need background on everything that’s happened between Nonito Jr. and Nonito Sr. A couple of years ago, Donaire fired his father as trainer. The old man has been bitter about it ever since, blaming the influence of Donaire’s wife Rachel, for the estrangement.

The elder Donaire has been yapping at his son ever since. Last year, when asked to compare Nonito Jr. to his latest protégé, Marvin Sonsona, he said, “[Sonsona] is ready to fight [Donaire] now.” That tipped everyone off that, Hey, maybe this old guy is just bitter, and maybe a little off his rocker. Nonito Jr. is, after all, a top pound-for-pound boxer, while Sonsona was a raw teenager. Incidentally, Sonsona was knocked out badly in his title fight this weekend and is reportedly considering retirement, because he never liked boxing all that much.

Last week, before Sonsona’s fight, Nonito Sr. took time out from his busy training schedule to disparage his son once more, speaking to Dennis Guillermo of Examiner.com.





Nonito Jr. found all this a little too much, and decided to release a video statement of his own. The funny part comes… oh, just watch the damn thing!



I suppose this shouldn’t come as much of a surprise since Nonito Jr. is pretty showbiz himself. It should be noted that Jericho Rosales also once played another great Filipino champion, Manny Pacquiao in a biopic. That’s one more thing the two of them have in common.

Jericho Rosales stars as Manny Pacquiao
Posted by jaemark on March 1, 2010 at 22:09 | Comments (6) | Trackbacks (0)
Tags: Boxing, Jude Turcuato, Manny Pacquiao, Marvin Sonsona, Nonito Donaire, Video

Carlos Tamara rallies for the upset over Brian Viloria; Donnie Nietes, Jimrex Jaca, Jason Pagara win

The Cuneta Astrodome was barely half-full, but you wouldn’t know it from the cheers of the audience. I went to the card with two of the biggest boxing nuts among my friends, Alekos Orendain, whom you might remember as the resident reviewer of the HBO 24/7 series on the site, and Alex Tizon, a Pulitzer Prize-winning colleague who “has been punched in the face more often than any of [his] closest friends.” Each of them had to travel halfway across the metropolis on a fine Saturday morning in January just to spend the next several hours watching skinny men pummel each other.

It was no surprise to us, therefore, that the crowd was composed of fellow boxing nuts who, when not screaming at the action in the ring, were busy hooting and hollering at, and pretty much sexually-harassing, the round girls during breaks. Testosterone dripped heavily in the air.

Brian Viloria, the IBF Junior Flyweight champion who headlined the card, gave the crowd plenty to cheer for early in his bout against Colombian challenger Carlos Tamara. “The Hawaiian Punch” took the action straight to Tamara, all but erasing his previous reputation, which he got during his first title reign four years ago, as a disappointing fighter who relied solely on his skills and talent but failed to show courage or heart.

Viloria held steady in a slugfest early in the game, to the delight of the crowd who chanted his name. “Brian, take it in the warehouse!” screamed a well-meaning fan, whose message was lost in translation; literally, it means “Brian, kunin mo sa bodega!” They were instructions, in colloquial Tagalog, for Viloria to keep taking it to Tamara’s body. Viloria complied, despite the mangled commands, shaking the challenger with furious body blows.

Then, all of a sudden, in the ninth-round, Tamara unleashed a 1-2 combination, and Viloria got hit. And hit. And hit. And hit. And hit. And hit. And hit. And hit.

You get the idea. For the next four rounds Viloria, who had been controlling the fight, looked dazed and exhausted. Finally, referee Bruce McTavish mercifully stopped the fight as Viloria showed signs of having trouble staying on his feet on his own. Tamara, himself a former Olympian like the fallen champion, celebrated the biggest victory of his career. The crowd, meanwhile, applauded both the conqueror and the fallen hero.

It was a terrible loss for Viloria, to be sure, although I’m sure fan sympathy remains with him for his gallant stand. Filipino boxing fans, especially the kind of nuts who were in attendance last Saturday, would much rather see their champions carried off their shields rather than coasting through to questionable victories. Viloria had a lot to be proud of in his performance this weekend.

I don’t know if Viloria has what it takes to climb the mountain once more. A lot has been made of his remarkable comeback after losing to his first world title to Omar Niño Romero, and then falling short in two attempts to regain a title, in a rematch against Romero and a title fight against Mexican champion Edgar Sosa. He toiled in a series of low-profile bouts before getting a shot against Ulises Solis, whom he knocked out at last year at the Araneta Coliseum. It was the best performance of his career, and he admitted afterward that had he lost, he would have contemplated retiring from the sport.

I also don’t know if Viloria would quit now; when was the last time a boxer retired young and stayed retired? But then, the knock on him during his entire professional career had been his desire, and the lack of it might just be enough to keep him away from the ring, if he does end up hanging up his gloves.

But the real big loser over the Viloria upset has to be Solar Sports, who ended their deal with Top Rank boxing to concentrate on building up the “Boxing at the Bay” series as a franchise. But without a big draw like Viloria, you could say Solar is up the Manila Bay without a paddle.

Meanwhile, Top Rank has signed a deal with Solar’s rival, ABS-CBN, who will be broadcasting all the big Top Rank cards that do not involve Manny Pacquiao. This includes next month’s Pinoy Power/Latin Fury card, which will feature Nonito Donaire, Gerry Peñalosa, and Bernabe Concepcion.

It’s a stunning turnaround for Solar, who only a year ago co-produced with Top Rank the highly-successful “the Flash the the Furious” card featuring Donaire and Viloria. It’s amazing just how they squandered all of their momentum from that event.

In the undercard, WBO minimumweight champion Donnie “Ahas” Nietes was very impressive in his non-title fight against Mexican Jesus Silvestro. Despite being a last-minute replacement, Silvestro bucked an opening-round knockdown to give a very competitive fight for Nietes, who displayed all of his skills. The match was fun to watch, with the two little guys going at it at warp-speed, but it ended weirdly in a technical knockout after Silvestro spat out his mouthpiece intentionally to buy some time in his corner.

Veteran Jimrex Jaca came off an almost two-year layoff to knock out Indonesia’s Ramadhan Weriu in the fifth round of their scheduled 10-round bout. Most casual boxing fans remember Jaca as the victim of Pacquiao’s rival, Juan Manuel Marquez, in 2006.

20-year-old lightweight prospect Jason Pagara survived in a majority decision against Indonesian Eddy Comaro in their ten-round bout. The first judge saw the fight as a 95-95 draw, while the second gave it barely to Pagara, 96-94. The crowd was stunned when it was announced that the third gave a lopsided 98-92 score to Pagara, and roundly booed the decision. The audience cheered roundly for the losing Indonesian fighter, proving indeed the crowd was full of knowledgeable boxing nuts.
Posted by jaemark on January 25, 2010 at 00:55 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)
Tags: Boxing, Brian Viloria, Manny Pacquiao, Nonito Donaire, Solar Sports
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