RINGSIDE REPORT: Now it has been confirmed. Manny Pacquiao is truly a phenomenon. He not only defeated Miguel Cotto in Saturday’s Firepower welterweight title fight in Las Vegas, he destroyed him.

RINGSIDE REPORT: Yuri Foreman seized the moment and outpointed and outclassed a lethargic Daniel Santos to become WBA 154-pound champion on the big show in Las Vegas on Saturday. I was pleased for Foreman, the New Yorker from Israel (but Belarus-born), who is studying to be a rabbi and no doubt adheres to the psalm blessing the Lord “which teacheth my hands to war and my fingers to fight”.

RINGSIDE REPORT: The anticipated rousing welterweight battle between Alfonso Gomez and Jesus Soto Karass was living up to expectations when the scheduled 10-rounder ended on an anticlimactic technical decision in Gomez’s favour on the Pacquiao-Cotto superfight show in Las Vegas.

RINGSIDE REPORT: OK, enough, already. I think I’ve been kinder to Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. than most. I’ve made allowances. No more, not after his lamentable performance in outpointing veteran middleweight Troy Rowland on the Firepower show on Saturday night in Las Vegas.

RINGSIDE REPORT: In a bout that featured almost non-stop punching, Mexico’s Juan Alberto Rosas fought in a steady, disciplined manner to win a unanimous 12-round decision over the wild-swinging, unconventionally styled Federico Catubay in their IBF junior bantamweight title eliminator. This made it two losses in the two main bouts for Filipino boxers on a show that took place the night before the Manny Pacquiao-Miguel Cotto superfight. Earlier, well-regarded Mark Melligen was outfought and outgamed by Mexico's Michel Rosales. Luckily for Pacquiao, this didn't turn out to be a bad omen.

RINGSIDE REPORT: Now we know that Mark Melligen isn’t the next Filipino superetsar. Melligen was very disappointing as he wilted down the stretch to be outpointed by Michel Rosales in their 10-round welterweight bout at the Mandalay Bay's House of Blues the night before the Pacquiao-Cotto superfight.  It was the sort of fight that was open to interpretation, with one judge marking Melligen ahead by 98-92 while the other two judges saw Rosales up by 96-94. In the consensus scoring (where all three, or two of three, judges agree on which boxer won the round) the score came out to 95-95, which was  how I had it from ringside. For me, this was an evenly balanced fight after eight rounds but Rosales came out strongly in the ninth and 10th, backing up a tiring Melligen and hurting him to the body.

Memo to self: for the umpteenth time, take boxers’ pre-fight comments with a grain of salt. David Haye talked so much about going for the knockout he had me believing it. Instead, Haye did what logic dictated he should do, which was to move this way and that, hit and get out, and not give Nikolai Valuev a chance to unload on him in Saturday’s heavyweight title fight in Germany.

Heavyweights often disappoint but the little fighters consistently provide big action, as we saw again when Colombia’s Yonnhy Perez outfought Ghana’s Joseph Agbeko to win the IBF bantamweight title in Showtime’s Halloween Night main event from Las Vegas.

MONDAY EVENING UPDATE The best and the worst of boxing was on view this past weekend. The best was the incredible fight for the European light-middleweight title on Friday in Bolton that saw Ryan Rhodes come back from a terribly shaky start to stop Jamie Moore in seven dramatic rounds.

There have been far worse decisions than the one that saw Carl Froch hang on to his WBC super middleweight title with a split decision win over Andre Dirrell in the second of the “Super Six” tournament’s first-stage bouts on Saturday night. Earlier in the evening, Arthur Abraham left no room for doubt with a dominant performance ending in a spectacular last-seconds knockout win over Jermain Taylor in Berlin.

One must feel sympathy for Jermain Taylor. For the second fight in succession he found himself crunched with the finishing post in sight. First, it was against Carl Froch in April, when Taylor had only to stay on his feet to win. On Saturday night in Berlin, Taylor was behind in the scoring but looked sure to hear the final bell when Arthur Abraham’s perfectly timed right hand dramatically flattened him. Who said lightning doesn’t strike twice?