Unfit for Prime Time

Unfit for prime time There is a time of the year in professional golf when the four tournaments collectively known as “the majors” are finished, the Ryder Cup, in even years, is through, and made-for- television and -sponsor events happen. Men pair with women. Seniors play against their peers’ college sons. Celebrities abound. The PGA Tour offers its endorsement sparingly, and while tape-delayed telecasts do end up on network television, they get a fraction of the coverage afforded The Masters. Professional golf properly refers to this time as its “silly season.” Many Pacquiao’s career is in the throes of its own silly season. A large difference between professional golf and prizefighting is that our sport affords its silly season Masters coverage. Saturday the silly season continued apace at MGM Grand – on Showtime pay-per-view, with additional promotional support from CBS! – as Filipino Congressman Pacquiao dominated an old and tired Shane Mosley for 12 listless rounds in a match its judges scored 120-107, 120-108, 119-108. Don’t trouble yourself with the math; it was a whitewash. The majors of Manny Pacquiao’s career ended in his rematch with Juan Manual Marquez, 26 months ago. Pacquiao had compiled an incredible record of 5-1-1 (3 KOs) against the prime versions of Mexico’s hall of fame triumvirate – Marquez, Erik Morales and Marco Antonio Barrera. Then the stadium concerts, made-for-television showdowns, and legislative feats began. Spectacle overwhelmed substance. One fight was about size difference with a faded veteran. Three more were about once-dangerous foes in new weight classes. Two were about Cowboys Stadium. And Saturday’s was about boxing having infomercials broadcast by a terrestrial television network. That’s putting the “silly” in silly season. Could Pacquiao have lost any one of his last six fights? Sure. But there’s a reason matchmaker Bruce Trampler is in Canastota. Boxing insiders figured this out a couple years ago. Oddsmakers got the gist shortly thereafter. And now even casual fans have learned their lesson. This traveling circus is out of big tops. A year ago Shane Mosley lost 11 of 12 rounds to the world’s second-best prizefighter. In September, Mosley made a pay-per- view show so dreadful his longtime fans begged him to retire. Eight months later, without so much as a get-me-over tune-up tussle, Mosley got a chance at the world’s best prizefighter. What qualified him for this opportunity? He left promoter Top Rank’s rival Golden Boy Promotions. To his credit, Bob Arum didn’t much pretend it was more than that. There was some initial talk about name recognition, but that quickly was replaced by press releases about Pacquiao becoming the new face of a produce company and recording a remix of some 34-year-old ballad. Shane Mosley feigned outrage at being a 10:1 underdog. His trainer Nazim Richardson performed the street-tough shtick he learned from Bernard Hopkins. Manny Pacquiao gave the same interview he has given before every fight since learning English in 2006. And Pacquiao’s trainer Freddie Roach lent his wit and sense of irony. Then the big story became the network broadcasting the match. Only boxing could come up with this. Imagine the NFL selling the world a Super Bowl with a tagline like “Watch it on Fox!” We were peddled a Showtime broadcasting team of Gus Johnson (no Jim Lampley), Al Bernstein (better than Max Kellerman) and Antonio Tarver (better than Roy Jones and Lennox Lewis put together). Jim Brown played hype man, and Jim Gray played, well, himself. The opening bell rang, and Shane Mosley played himself, too. Mosley is one of boxing’s good guys. His career has been a model of what risk-taking makes athletes immortals. And yet, if Saturday was the first time you watched boxing or Shane Mosley, on Sunday morning you woke up hating them both. But for a career-reviving effort against Antonio Margarito in 2009, Mosley has been an imposter of his younger self since a narrow loss to Miguel Cotto 42 months ago. He has been given more opportunities than he’s earned because aficionados expect him to lose valiantly. Those days are now over. Saturday he began the same way he finished with Mayweather. He offered a woodpecker jab to Pacquiao’s gloves. He was savvy enough to make Pacquiao miss for six minutes, but he never imperiled the southpaw Filipino. Then Pacquiao gambled because that is what he does by feinting a jab then throwing one and finding range with a third before leaping on his piston legs and blasting Mosley with a left cross that hurt him because nothing in Mosley’s first 54 prizefights prepared him to be struck from such a weird angle by such a heavy fist. And for the 28 minutes that followed, Mosley did his legacy no favors. Apparently the lactic acid in Pacquiao’s calves did the rest of us no favors either; Pacquiao attributed his diminished punch output and accuracy to cramping. It mattered little. After the opening round, you knew you were in for a violent rout or a dull one. You knew the $54 you had just paid to make a handful of millionaires marginally richer had not gained you a competitive fight. And now you cry out again for a match between Many Pacquiao and Floyd Mayweather. Do know that your voice is hoarse and barely audible, and that you’re begging for a diminished brand. The time to make Pacquiao-Mayweather was March of 2010 in Cowboys Stadium. Pacquiao had just stopped Cotto – a fighter Mayweather retired to avoid – and Mayweather had just shut-out Pacquiao’s nemesis Marquez. Today, the demand for that fight is an ultimatum, not a plea: “Make Pacquiao-Mayweather, or find a new idiot to buy your next fight.” Calm down, tough guy. Boxing is just going to do what it always does. It’ll take the path of least resistance to its next payday. The hunt for a new idiot is already afoot. Bart Barry can be reached via Twitter @bartbarry.

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