MANNY PACQUIAO W12 JOSHUA CLOTTEY

In another spectacular display of blazing speed, power and stamina, Manny Pacquiao dominated the extremely durable Joshua Clottey to win a unanimous, near shutout 12-round decision on Saturday night. There was no real doubt about the outcome but I didn’t expect Pacquiao to beat Clottey out of sight, which is just about what he did. Clottey is a big, strong, capable welterweight but he simply didn’t stand a chance.

As tough as Clottey is, and as hard to hit cleanly with his watertight defence, there were moments when I thought he might be swept away by the Filipino typhoon.

Clottey always managed to answer back just enough, however, to stay in the fight, if barely. Occasionally he would land a couple of body punches, push back Pacquiao’s head with a left uppercut or shoot a straight right hand through the middle. He wouldn’t go away, as they say in the business.

Pacquiao kept trying to blast Clottey out of the fight, and the Ghanaian took the sort of body battering that would surely have finished many welterweights. As I wrote in the Boxing Monthly preview, though, Clottey had prepared himself mentally and physically for the ordeal he knew he was going to have to face, and I believe he had his mind made up that even if he was going to lose he was at least going to stay the course — and when a fighter is determined not to be stopped it is very hard for their opponent to get the stoppage, even if that opponent is Manny Pacquiao.

Once again the talk turns to Pacquiao versus Floyd Mayweather Jr. If Mayweather defeats Shane Mosley on May 1 in Las Vegas — and he is favoured to do so — can the most compelling fight in boxing be brought to fruition? It seems almost madness that a Pacquiao-Mayweather will never happen. Surely the two sides can move closer on the matter of Olympics-style drug testing that Mayweather demands. Can’t each side give just a little? (Of course, if Mosley has an inspired evening at the MGM Grand all this could be a moot point.)

Watching Pacquiao pound away almost nonstop for 12 rounds, one could see how this astonishing fighter could easily overwhelm Mayweather with sheer punch-volume. Mayweather adherents might have gained some encouragement, though. When Clottey let his hands go he was able to hit Pacquiao with flush punches, raising a bruise under the WBO champion’s right eye. One can picture Mayweather slipping and blocking punches, rolling with the wave after wave of attack that will surely be coming, then firing back and making his punches count.

Clottey’s strategy was to hunker down behind his high guard, brace his body for the shots that were coming in underneath his elbows, and then open up just enough to make Pacquiao back off a little and keep the referee from thinking too hard about the stopping the fight.

It was a stay-with-it display of endurance in the face of superior speed, talent and firepower. Clottey was going for the moral victory of lasting the full 12 rounds; Mayweather would be coming to win. There is a big difference.

Usually, the great fights do get made: Ali-Frazier, Leonard-Hearns, Robinson-Basilio, Hagler-Hearns, Sanchez-Gomez, Pryor-Arguello and on and on. Sometimes, though, the fights the boxing public wants to see simply don’t happen: Lewis-Bowe, Nelson-McGuigan, Leonard-Hagler II; Robinson-Basilio III, Galindez-Conteh come to mind.

My guess is that public demand could yet bring the Pacquiao and Mayweather factions back to the table for one last try. Shane Mosley hopes to have something to say about that, however, and all eyes will be on the MGM Grand in Las Vegas on May 1.

REST OF THE WEEKEND IN BRIEF:

Although he scored a predictable win, I was disappointed with the lack of fire shown by Humberto Soto in his unanimous decision victory over David Diaz on Saturday’s PPV show. Soto won comfortably on points to capture the vacant WBC lightweight title but he seems to have settled into the style of a technician and I doubt we will ever again see the hard-driving intensity that he exhibited when destroying Francisco Lorenzo in their first fight (the one where Soto was disqualified in one of the worst travesties in boxing history). Maybe Soto was feeling Diaz’s strength on the inside and decided to box his way safely through the 12 rounds but the HBO commentary team made a good point that perhaps the 29-year-old from Los Mochis is a little worn out after a long (13-year) career.

Alfonso Gomez was another predictable winner but I didn’t expect it to be quite as easy as it was as the Contender favourite slapped around the shell of Jose Luis Castillo for five rounds in their welterweight mismatch. Max Kellerman noted that this was “a poor excuse of a fight for a major pay per view show” and one had to agree. However, while the fight was lacklustre I was pleased to see the gritty Gomez have an easy night after bloody battles with Juan Buendia and Jesus Soto Karass. Yes, Castillo looked as if he wished he was somewhere else but Gomez went out and took care of business.

John Duddy kept his proposed fight with Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. alive by winning a split decision over Michael Medina in the PPV show-opener, but it was a struggling performance. The Irish middleweight landed most of the clean punches and deserved the win but it was worrying to see Duddy getting backed up and outpunched in the last round. Duddy won the fight on experience as much as anything but the spark he once had is no longer there, and the 30-year-old from Derry, once such an enthusiastic and spirited boxer, now has the look of a weary old pro.

Fox Sports Espanol served up a cracking show on Friday, with heavyweight contender Samuel Peter back to his best form in blowing out the overmatched Nagy Aguilera in two rounds. I had expected Peter to look good and get the stoppage, but I didn’t think it would be this quick. Peter looked relatively streamlined at a little over 237 pounds and he was much quicker and sharper than when he was weighing in the 250s. If he can keep the weight off and stay disciplined under his new trainer, Abel Sanchez, I believe that Peter has a reasonably good chance of being champion again.

Hernan “Tyson” Marquez was, for me, the disappointment of the weekend. The fact that the unbeaten Mexican flyweight failed to make weight for his bout with Filipino Richie Mepranum should, in retrospect, have been a red flag because Marquez looked slow and sluggish, and he was outboxed and outclassed. Mepranum looked much more authoritative and polished than when I saw him fade badly and barely eke out a win over Ernie Marquez in a six-rounder in Las Vegas last November. This wasn’t the same Marquez I had seen in earlier fights in Mexico — but it wasn’t the same Mepranum I saw in Las Vegas, either. My guess is that one man came in semi-motivated, and expecting an easy knockout, while the other had prepared himself to put forth the very best performance that he had in him. That is how upsets occur.