Manny Pacquiao didn’t need to be elected to the Congress of the Philippines to be a public servant. The thrills he delivers inside the squared circle are as generous a gift to his country and boxing fans the world over as any he should ever be asked to provide.
In fact, the show he put on in pummeling disgraced former welterweight champion Antonio Margarito packed enough entertainment to overshadow the fact that the fight itself was virtually uncompetitive. Perhaps it was a desire to mend his tarnished legacy that kept Margarito on his feet and willing to take more punishment than he is likely to ever face from any boxing committee for trying to illegally load his gloves before his fight against Shane Mosley last year. Either way, Pacquiao gave him every reason to quit and his fans every reason to smile.
The most intriguing element to Pacquiao-Margarito was never the fight itself. It wasn’t a question of whether the faster and more versatile Pacquiao would win but whether he would be able to serve up justice to boxing’s public enemy number one in a fashion pundits would deem acceptable. How more symbolic can it get than matching an increasingly popular and, by all appearances, humble elected official against the sport’s biggest rule-breaker, who not only deflected blame for his crime but mocked the accusations at every opportunity?
Margarito couldn’t even make it into the ring without being linked to more foul play. Within an hour of the fight, he appeared to attempt to ingest the banned substance ephedra through the over-the-counter product Hydroxycut, a combination likely to give him a much-needed extra energy boost against boxing’s equivalent of the Energizer Bunny.
Apparently, those chants of “cheater” aimed at Margarito when he stepped onto the scales at Friday’s weigh-in bounced off his skin like the punches of a flyweight. Already branded a cheater, he may have figured he might as well play the part to the max.
Unfortunately for Margarito, he found himself across the ring from boxing’s designated executioner. Sorry, Bernard, but if there’s one man qualified to deliver in-ring justice today, it’s Manny Pacquiao. And on this night, Pacquiao was equally ready to play his part.
Aside from one head-turning moment where Margarito momentarily froze him against the ropes with a body shot, Pacquiao answered the call, constantly turning Margarito’s head every which way but off his shoulders. By the late rounds, with both of Margarito’s eyes swollen and his face bloodied, Manny being Manny showed mercy by first asking the referee to stop the fight and then taking his foot off the gas for the twelfth round. Margarito made it to the final bell but probably would have preferred to be knocked cold in the first several rounds than take the sustained beating he received.
For a fight on such a big stage, the bout ended up almost as one-sidedly brutal an affair as when Floyd Mayweather Jr. memorably took Arturo Gatti apart with a virtuoso performance in 2005. Fittingly, Mayweather is the one remaining piece of business Pacquiao has in the sport of boxing.
Because despite all of the silly notions about Pacquiao being an “eight-division” world champion and the very necessary disclaimers that come along with those accolades, Manny isn’t through with boxing until he’s through with Mayweather. The public demands it. And Manny, by his own admission, is a public servant. It’s time to give the people what they want.
That means, in addition to making his own demands about the fight, Pacquiao must give in to Mayweather’s. Translation: Olympic-style drug testing, with no cutoff dates to leave any doubt that the best two boxers in the world are entering the fight on even terms. Not only has Mayweather – undefeated in 41 professional fights and HBO’s highest grossing fighter in history – earned that right, but the people deserve to know that Pacquiao’s success over the last 10 years has been the result of hard work and not performance-enhancing drugs.
If Pacquiao’s trainer Freddie Roach can threaten to hold up a fight over hints of Hydroxycut, then he and his fighter can surely show the world that Manny’s body, power and ability to take punishment even as he travels into higher and higher weight classes are simply because the man is a freak of nature.
With that said, it takes two to tango. Before the biggest fight in boxing history can become a reality, Mayweather must handle his own legal dilemma and work to restore his standing in the sport. With an upcoming court date for allegedly assaulting the mother of his children, Floyd, like Margarito, should be thinking damage control. With the spotlight on him once again, Floyd has the opportunity to show the world that he, like Pacquiao, can still be an ambassador for the sport.
And if he doesn’t, rest assured, Manny Pacquiao can be called in to clean up another bad apple in boxing.
