Victims of fiction

The punch statistics from Compubox had Manny Pacquiao winning over Juan Manuel Marquez, thus validating the majority decision the Filipino boxer eked out over the Mexican. So why do fight fans the world over to this day continue to doubt the outcome.

I do not wish to blow my own horn, but on the Friday before the fight, I actually wrote in this space (To The Quick, The Freeman, 11 November 2011) about my disdain for those mediamen, many of whom were Filipinos, who never seemed to give Marquez a fighting chance at winning.

The way the fight was projected, it was as if Marquez had no hands and was expected to just stand there and get beaten to a pulp. I wrote then that this biased reporting was deluding people into expecting a devastating victory for Pacquiao even before he set foot in the ring.

Let me cite an example. Veteran journalist and sports analyst Ronnie Nathanielz, whom Karen Davila interviewed on ABS-CBN on the eve of the fight, said that while he did not foresee a knockout, he nevertheless expected the referee to stop the fight in the 5th or 6th round.

In the appreciation of Nathanielz, Marquez will become such a pathetic punching bag that the referee will have no choice but to stop the fight and award the match to Pacquiao. You know what happened after the fight? Nathanielz decided to sing a different tune just like that.

But there were dozens of other Nathanielzes out there, all crowing about Pacquiao before the fight, all of them refusing to eat crow afterward, thus leaving the public they deceived with no emotional crutch to at least catch their breath and find out what happened.

All of those who glowingly paid their hosannahs to Pacquiao have suddenly found a brand new preoccupation, which is to flog the Filipino champion. The hero has now become the favorite whipping boy, though no fault of his own.

I myself was greatly disappointed in the outcome of the fight. I too wanted Pacquiao to knock Marquez out. But my reasons were different. I wanted Pacquiao to knock Marquez out because I wanted the Mexican silenced, not because I thought he was a mismatched pushover.

Pacquiao is not a good boxer. He has no style. But he is gifted with one-of-a-kind power. That is why he has prevailed over boxers much better than he is. Because in boxing you get hit, no matter how great you are. And when you get hit by Pacquiao, you end up on queer street.

Marquez, on the other hand, is very technical. More than being a great counterpuncher, he has a method for style. His punches are deliberate. He never flails about like Pacquiao. When he lets go of a punch, it follows a certain direction and seldom misses. He is very accurate.

If there is one person who knows this, it is Pacquiao. It is Pacquiao who has been in the ring with Marquez, not Bob Arum, not Freddie Roach, not the millions of fans, and certainly not the mediamen. 

If Pacquiao decided to train harder for his third fight with Marquez, going 10 weeks instead of his usual six to eight, it must have been for a reason. And that should have been the dead giveaway. Yet, incredibly, nobody gave Marquez a spitting chance.

So all of us are left holding an empty bag. Some may say a disputed victory is a victory nevertheless. True. But that comes in part only because we are Filipino. Reviewing the fight does not help any, not even when armed with the Compubox stats.

And yet none of this is the fault of Pacquiao, at least based on what we know. It is the fault of those who not only wrote the story before it happened but started telling it ahead of its time. Worse, people started believing in happily ever after before the once upon a time.