To watch the first two fights in the series, click here and here
For all the brilliance of Manny Pacquiao’s career, from jumping up and winning titles in more divisions than anyone else to being firmly established as one of the greatest fighters of his generations, one thing has eluded him. One thing has haunted the back half of his career, almost as much as the much-ballyhooed super fight with Floyd Mayweather Jr.
A clean win over Juan Manual Marquez, a man whom Pacquiao has gone 1-0-1 against and will complete the trilogy this weekend.
It’s the one thing Pacquiao doesn’t have over Marquez, himself a man you could identify in the same league as the Filipino Congressman. After competing to a draw the first time, and a razor-sharp decision awarded to Pacquiao the second time, the one thing the two fights don’t have right now is closure. We don’t know who the better fighter between the two is; you can argue that both fights could be scored for either fighter fairly in convincing fashion. The two bring the absolute best out of each other and a third fight will hopefully give us a definitive winner. And it’ll become much more important if the Mayweather/Pacquiao fight doesn’t happen. Why?
Because Pacquiao’s ultimate legacy is going to be defined by this trilogy if he never faces Mayweather.
For all the wins and the high profile fights he’s had, a boxer’s ultimate legacy relies on two things: His wins and his opponents. It’s why we remember a fighter like Mike Tyson being that much more impressive than he really was and short-change a fighter like Lennox Lewis. Tyson’s legacy of knockouts as the “baddest man on the planet” seems more impressive than Lewis being the best heavyweight boxer of his era and a series of lackluster wins over quality opponents.
We remember Tyson as this force of nature who wrecked guys in his wake and Lewis as the skilled pugilist but we never do the fantasy boxing game of “Who’d win between x and y” featuring Lewis, do we? We always do it with “Could Muhammad Ali beat Tyson?” and speculating on whether or not a prime Tyson would gas in the same manner George Foreman did with Ali’s “rope a dope” or whether or not Tyson’s ferocious power would find its mark early on. Tyson’s the sexier matchup but Lewis was significantly better as a fighter; we’re going to have the same argument when it comes to Pacquiao-Mayweather years after both are done fighting.
And it’ll be even tougher if he doesn’t have the big win against his biggest rival.
We have to be honest when we talk about Manny and his rivals in this way. An epic matchup Mayweather may be bandied about, and may be fodder for 100 columns on 100 media outlets a day on whether or not it’ll happen, but it’ll be at best a one-time super fight. It’ll be the last big peak historians use as the final uptick on boxing before it continues its downward slide. That’s what it represents and in the end game of things it’ll be the one that perhaps establishes who’s the better fighter between Mayweather and Pacquiao, the winner being the one viewed as the best pound for pound boxer of his era. Without it the debate rages on and one of the deciding arguments you could make is that Pacquiao never definitively beat Marquez.
Mayweather did.
Marquez represents something more for Pacquiao than just the capping fight in a trilogy for the ages. If Manny can’t defeat him decisively then the catcalls that he’s not as good as Mayweather are going to get louder. The luster on the magical matchup, the panacea to cure all of boxing’s ills, loses a little bit if Pacquiao doesn’t get that big win over the man you can rightfully call his biggest rival. Mayweather is the money matchup, no pun intended, but Marquez is the legacy matchup. And there’s a massive difference between them.
A dominant win puts him in the driver’s seat to make a fight with Mayweather one to perhaps define who the best fighter of their generation is. Without it, Pacquiao’s legacy gets tarnished a little. Win or lose against Mayweather, Manny gets held up as one of the best. You can’t say the same about the Marquez fight, which has bigger implications.
