thoughts on manny pacquiao

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The 8 divisions thing is not a scam. That's almost impossible to achieve.

 

Eh, think you're getting carried away in the first paragraph. It has become fashionable now to **** on him and treat him like a laughingstock (ha-ha, went out on his shield against the best two pound for pound fighters of his generation, what a LOSER!!!!) but Ricky Hatton generated, at least for one insulated (but extremely passionate) nationalistic fan base, that exact same aura you're describing - and it was infectious. Fans outside the UK were ultimately drawn into the cult of personality around the Hitman, and I think pretty much the entire world (at least, the parts of it that follow boxing even obliquely) all watched breathlessly as he entered the ring against Floyd, hoping beyond hope that amiable, relatable old Ricky, the man we could all see grabbing a pint with, could be the one to snatch that zero.

I think honestly more people across the globe were rooting for Hatton to do it than ultimately were rooting for Pac to do it by the time he and Mayweather met.

 

This I can see may be true. Hatton when he met Mayweather was a highly rated undefeated fighter. Although in retrospect overrated, not to say that he's not a quality fighter, but hardly a great talent. Pacquiao when he fought Mayweather hadn't had a KO in 6 years and had undergone a change in style that was both much less effective and less exciting than his previous style.

Hatton had never really gotten into the ring with guys of same talent that Pacquiao did. You have to consider that Pacquiao was lining up elite after elite. And win, lose or draw he was in very exciting fights. Hatton had an extremely passionate fan base in his home country. But that is nothing compared to the fan base Pacquiao had in the Philippines. Manny Pacquiao is an ignorant, illiterate boxer who made a living bashing people over the head. He's now considered the favorite in any political campaign he launches in his home country, including a potential Presidential run. That's the type of PacMania that goes on in the Philippines.

Pacquiao is the most popular politician, athlete, actor and musician in the country of the Philippines. He's bigger than Michael Jackson, the Beatles and Michael Jordan combined in his home country.

 

Definitely one of goats in his prime and very, very exciting fighter, an offensive powerhouse

Unfortunately he has gone down the road that too many fighters tend to do... Dodging retirement, continuing too long. Boxing is not a healthy profession to continue on for too long. Besides, its one of the sports where growing old (slower reflexes, loss of speed and all that) matter quite a bit, even more than in many other sports.

I will continue to watch his fight, but I just hope that we wont continue to see him lose to opposition that he would have completely mauled years ago

 

That's the thing though - that intensity, is contained in the one country - that most of the rest of the world doesn't know a goddamn thing about (if you polled people on the street, and I don't just mean Americans, asking to say the top three things that came to mind when they thought "Philippines", they'd say Duterte, Manny Pacquiao, and maybe "some WWII stuff happened there?" or be stumped to even come up with a 3rd thing). While the Philippines does have a population 35% greater than the UK's, their umbrella of cultural impact is probably less than 1% of the UK's. Hatton was huge at home, which means he was huge across the entire Commonwealth (everywhere that was formerly part of the Empire, on which the sun famously never set). Pac was and still is huge at home - with that same rabid level of Pac-Mania having bleed-over into ...what, the rest of archipelagic southeast Asia? Maybe a bit of mainland? His following is worldwide, but well over 90% of that, outside the PI, are just peripherally into him, or just flat-out casuals. "Oh yeah, he's like my favorite boxer. I've definitely seen Pac-man fight a time or two. Definitely caught some highlights. Didn't he knock out Mike Tyson or something? Or am I thinking George St. Pierre?"

 

Amazing fighter. Burst onto the scene like no ones business with incredible wins like barrera 1 and the ledwaba fight.

His blind loyalty to bob arum i think cost him dearly in his 147 days..

 

Even if Hatton had a passionate following in the U.K. and in many parts of the world, which he surely did. Pacquiao was at the very least close to comparable to that. And after the DLH fight it was clearly titled in favor of Pacquiao. Also, Pacquiao was the more exciting fighter taking on more big name fighters and in many more weight classes. But yes I agree and I forgot about Hatton's fan base. I always though Carl Froch was the better and more exciting fighter, but for some reason he could never capture the blue collar British guys the way Hatton could.

 

He was the best of his era Manny didnt get any questionable assisstance from the NSAC & Vegas boxing officials like his nemeses did

 

I think you underestimate Manny Pacquiao's status as a global superstar. He was a massive draw in China and Australia showing that he really did have international renown and appeal. I think a lot more people knew who Manny Pacquiao was than had ever heard of Ricky Hatton or even Floyd Mayweather. He wasn't just on the cover of Ring Magazine 30 times. He was on the cover of Time, Men's Health, Sports Illustrated, Esquire, Readers Digest, and Newsweek.

 

a) What percentage of Chinese people do you think have ever watched a boxing match?

b) the overall population of the entire Australian continent is the same as like one American metropolis.

 

Pacquiao didn't choose Marquez. Pacquiao didn't call him out. He went up and chased the big names and money fights. Marquez followed Pac up to welterweight (with the assistance of a doping expert and drugs) and begged for the fight repeatedly. Then it made sense because Marquez was a Mexican name. Also, you can't cherrypick a guy who is the worst possible stylistic match up who was also roided to the gills, Dummy!

 

a)Probably none until Pacquiao opened up the sport in that country with his fights against Rios and Algieri. Newspapers claimed something like 300 million viewers watched his fights there, but that is probably inflated. My guess would be just a little more people watched him fight in China than just watched this weekends Super Bowl in America.

b)There's two ways to look at that. One, you could say that Australia only has a population of 25 million but he still managed to get 51 thousand of them to attend a fight of his. Two, you could say that Australia has roughly half the population of the United Kingdom which you were just lauding up the page a bit.

 

a) boxing is still ultra fringe in China, though. At its absolute peak ever it drew 300 million (even if we accept those numbers as genuine and not the usual bogus wildly exaggerated stuff like we get over here) - a fifth of the population - but that was just the morbid curiosity/freak-show type of appeal. Probably less than 1% of Chinese people actually follow boxing.

Australia, though, like the Philippines, doesn't have a speck of the cultural influence on the rest of the world that both the US and UK do. (far beyond the proportions of their respective populations)

 

I walk Satan's path myself.