I’m An Idiot
 By Coyote Duran (Nov 30, 2006) Photo © German Villasenor
Attention, Howlers: Manny Pacquiao is NOT The Ring magazine’s World Champion at junior lightweight.
I know what you’re probably saying right now: “Duh. We knew that, meathead. Everyone who’s everyone knows that Manny Pacquiao is the WBC Interim Internationally Incontinent Intercontinental Super Featherweight Champion Emeritus…Dude, you’re such an idiot.”
Well…yes…yes, I am…and thank you?
Now that the obvious is out of the way, I suppose you’d like to know why, exactly, I’m admitting to such a dubious distinction, aren’t you? Well, it’s easy. I made a mistake and I’m choosing this article as a forum to own up and clear a few things up for you, my excellent readers.
See, earlier in the day on November 18, prior to Manny Pacquiao’s third-round mashing of Erik Morales, Doghouse Boxing, as we are wont to do, published our predictions for who we thought would come out ahead in Pacquiao and Morales’ pay-per-view rubbermatch. An excerpt from my prediction reads as follows:
“Hey, I want to root for Morales. Honestly, I'd like to see him pull it off and re-enter the pound-for-pound ratings with a bang. Morales deserves it. But deserving it and earning it are certainly two very different things. With a vacant Ring Magazine World Junior Lightweight Championship on the line, the motivation is especially high for 'Pac-Man' to prove
that he didn't catch his most noted rival on a bad night in their first go-'round.”
The preceding paragraph is of note, primarily, because at the time of the fight, Manny Pacquiao was ranked # 1 and Erik Morales was # 3 in The Ring’s junior lightweight ratings. So, where’s the mistake that I’m referring to, you might ask? Well, in my excitement for a potential genuine vacant world title to be filled, I overlooked a reasonable championship standard for filling a title vacancy that I thought I fully understood.
The operative word here, kids, is ‘thought.’
I honestly thought that if Pacquiao emerged with a win over Morales, he would be recognized as the real World Junior Lightweight Champion as per The Ring’s championship policy criteria. After all, The Ring states that “Championship vacancies can be filled by winning a box-off between The Ring’s number one and number two contenders, or, in certain situations, a box-off between our number one and number three contenders.” So with this policy rule in mind, it makes perfect sense that Manny Pacquiao be the new World Junior Lightweight Champion, right?
Wrong.
Before and after the fight, I noticed something. No one else on the internet had the wicked foresight that Yours Truly did to report ‘the truth.’ I mean, is it any surprise that the media, en masse, would overlook The Ring’s designation of Manny’s championship status when they could fully throw such officially WBC-approved ‘International’ accolades at him and most hardcore fight fans would accept it as official boxing canon? Why not? It’s what most, if not all ring announcers do, anyway. But then, I figured out why.
Amid my self-centered amazement of why The Ring’s championship hadn’t been mentioned at all in last Saturday’s aftermath, there was a nagging nugget of dread. Why hadn’t Maxboxing or Fight News or Boxingtalk mention this? For the love of Huey, had they all called in ignorant? I was desperate for answers! I was actually losing sleep over this…OK, maybe not this, but that jalapeno hand-tossed pizza was wreaking havoc on the stomach. Those rum-and-colas didn’t quite help either, I reckon. It was time to act, ‘Jonas Blane’-style.
The following Monday, the 20th, I e-mailed The Ring’s editor-in-chief, Nigel Collins, asking for clarification. I asked if I could’ve been wrong. Deep inside, however, I felt that there was no way I could be wrong. I mean, who loves The Ring more than me?! I’ve got my finger on the pulse! I spend more time than any other writer on the web defending the virtues of ‘The Bible of Boxing’, right? I KNOW WHAT I’M TALKING ABOUT!
Apparently, in the spirit of most abbreviated Thanksgiving work weeks, I can only assume that Nigel had some vacation time coming and abdicated the throne for a wee bit. No problem there. I’d have done the same thing. After all, my Joe job was scaled down to a three-dayer for Turkey Day so why shouldn’t the man at the top of the masthead take a holiday breather? But I had the shakes, Howlers…The shakes of desperation. I just had to know the truth.
As an avid Ring freak, I deferred to the Ring’s website, www.thering-online.com, for an article that I thought would help me sate my hunger for comfort in this trying time. I remembered that the Ring’s senior writer, William Dettloff, who provides one of the most entertaining reads this side of Maxboxing’s Doug Fischer’s Monday Mailbag, had posted a comparative analysis (the day before the fight) of Pacquiao and Morales’ attributes going into the fight. I figured that maybe…just maybe…I would find the answers that I needed in Bill’s column (“Showdown! Manny Pacquiao vs. Erik Morales”).
Nope. Came up snake-eyes. Not one mention of any Ring belt being on the line…What the hell is going on here?
Time for ‘Plan B.’: Go to the next available guy for answers. I go to William Dettloff. If anyone can hook up a brotha’ with the truth, it’s gotta be Bill. Time for an e-mail…
I shoot Bill an e-mail voicing my concern (and a copy of the forwarded e-mail I sent Nigel Collins), wondering why there wasn’t a mention of Pacquiao’s potential to win a Ring belt and what did I get as a response?...
“Hi, Coyote. Thanks for your note.
The Pacquiao-Morales fight was not for the Ring belt. Any Ring championship fight at 130 has to include (WBC super featherweight titlist Marco Antonio) Barrera. If Pacquiao and Barrera meet now, the winner will be the Ring champ.
Thanks again.”
Bill
Now, waitaminnit…Why Barrera? Didn’t Pacquiao just deep-six the # 3 cat in the world?? For cryin’ out loud, Morales was # 3 and Pac blew him out in three!! He’s the champ! The Ring said so!...Christ…I think I’m gonna pass out…
And then it hit me…
This wasn’t one of those ‘certain situations’ where the ‘number one and number three contenders’ would fight for the strap at all. And the factor holding back a championship match was Morales himself.
The funny thing was, the previous ‘# 1 vs. # 3’ example that compelled me to mistakenly think that the Pacquiao-Morales fight was a legitimate title filler was actually the very same scenario that opened my eyes as to why Manny and Erik’s third fight wouldn’t be a championship fight at all. Confused? Well, I was at one time. And now, it’s my duty to help alleviate your confusion, since I’m probably responsible for most, if not all, of it.
And since you’re wondering what that ‘previous ‘# 1 vs. # 3’ example’ was that I referred to in the aforementioned paragraph, I’ll be glad to tell you the exact situation that threw me off. It was probably the very same one that made you scratch your heads in wonderment when it first occurred. You know the one. It happened on April 24, 2006, when # 1 Ring-ranked Vitali Klitschko faced # 3 Corrie Sanders for the vacant Ring World Heavyweight and WBC heavyweight straps. To this day, the message boards are still crushing The Ring for that one. But here’s the hot set-up, cats and chicks: Whereas Sanders deserved that exception and subsequent allowance to fight for a world championship, Morales, a # 3 contender just the same, didn’t. Here’s why (and I know you wanna know!):
Corrie Sanders did to heavyweight wunderkind Wladimir Klitschko what few thought any other fighter would ever do again since Ross Puritty did it eight years ago. He beat the hell out of him and handed him a TKO loss in the second heat of their WBO title match over three-and-a-half years ago. At the time, Klitschko had been considered the future of the heavyweight division and few, if any, ever dreamt that Sanders, a dark horse who was more interested in golf than Our Sport and had been TKO’ed by Hasim Rahman just three fights prior for an even more useless minor alphabet title, could ever pull off such an insurmountable feat. In defeating the younger Klitschko, Sanders rocketed high into The Ring’s ratings, rising no higher than # 3, but still an amazing distinction, nonetheless. As mentioned before, Sanders’ win would net him Klitschko’s WBO belt. Fans would soon excitedly call Corrie Sanders a ‘world heavyweight champion.’
Ugh.
If Sanders’ new legend hadn’t enveloped fandom enough, new possibilities would soon emerge for Lennox Lewis’ sudden retirement would pull the loose yarn which then unraveled the already flimsy quilt which was the heavyweight division. When Lewis retired, the three straps he had left after being stripped by the WBA and surrendering the IBF belt would suddenly become vacant: The WBC belt, the very marginally regarded IBO title and The Ring magazine’s World Championship. Wladimir Klitschko’s older brother Vitali, who would lose via TKO to Lewis (in Lewis’ final fight months before he retired in early-2004) in a valiant stand three months after Wladimir fell to Sanders, would remain the Ring’s # 1 contender. If he faced then-IBF titlist Chris Byrd, who was # 2 at the time, the winner would come out of the fight the new World Champion as recognized by The Ring. But there was one small problem. Byrd has just fought Andrew Golota to a draw on April 17 of 2004 and certainly wasn’t ready for another showdown, much less against the elder Klitschko.
Enter # 3: Corrie Sanders. Based on Sanders’ icon-toppling win over Wladimir Klitschko, his spot in the ratings was sound, solid and deserved. And Sanders would be given the opportunity to fight Vitali Klitschko for the one, true World Heavyweight Championship, in respect to The Ring’s championship policy which would allow, ‘in certain cases’, a # 3 contender the opportunity to challenge # 1 for the World Heavyweight title…Oh, and the WBC belt was on the line, too. Just figured I’d throw that in, to be fair.
Fast-forward to April 24, 2004, seven days after Byrd-Golota. The scene? The Staples Center in Los Angeles. A belt-less Sanders, who was required to vacate his WBO strap in order to challenge for the WBC belt (although The Ring would never have asked him to do that), summoned everything he could in order to face his previous foe’s older brother. However, fast hands and a heart of steel couldn’t make up for a year away from the ring, only to re-enter it against a vengeful sibling. Sanders would fall in eight. A new World Champion would be crowned and a dejected Sanders would return eight months later to knock out Alexei Varakin in two. It was OK. Varakin apparently loved getting knocked out and Sanders was quite the name for anyone’s record. What a story for the grandkids, someday!
The backlash was heavy and volatile. Fans who had been dodgy on what qualified The Ring to designate champions in the first place were fully f__ked off now. Why would anyone on Earth reasonably consider Corrie Sanders a legitimate world championship contender? The amusing thing was that half that had complained about The Ring’s placement of Sanders as a championship match participant were more than happy to consider him a genuine ‘world champion’ in beating Wladimir Klitschko for the WBO title. Figures.
So here I am, in 2006, thinking that I’ve got the heads-up, man. I mean, come on. If Corrie Sanders can be considered a real world title challenger, according to The Ring, then why can’t Erik Morales, # 3 in The Ring’s ratings at junior lightweight be Manny Pacquiao’s (# 1!) opposite number in a rubbermatch that’ll give us a bona fide champion in one, if not THE, hottest division in boxing today?
Well, because he can’t, that’s why. And it took Bill Dettloff’s e-mail to me to make me realize that.
The bottom line is that although ‘El Terrible’ was ranked # 3 in The Ring’s junior lightweight ratings, prior to the rubbermatch against Pacquiao, Morales lost three of his last four fights, one of them against ‘Pac-Man.’ And that doesn’t exactly scream out ‘world champion’, now does it? And in my supposed understanding of all things Ring magazine, I never considered that this fight would not fall under the accepted designation of a ‘certain case’ and in my ignorance, I misled Doghouse Boxing’s readers. For that, I’m really, really sorry.
Look, I realize that The Ring isn’t looked at as a legitimate championship body by many fans or promoters and, for crying out loud, it isn’t supposed to be. But by the same token, there hasn’t been a media entity more concerned about contributing to the solutions instead of just bitching about the problems. As an internet writer, an associate editor and an avid supporter of The Ring, it’s my job to keep you, the readers, from being any more confused about something I’m passionately in support of and I’m sure as hell not gonna give anyone any more ammunition when it comes to the ever-present ‘Sanctioning body vs. The Ring: Who’s More Legitimate?’ debate.
I just figured I’d let you all know this as soon as I could because sooner or later, Manny Pacquiao’s gonna do his thing again and there ain’t gonna be a belt in sight, but some excuse-to-slap-on-metal-plates-on-a-leather-strap-and-call-it-a-championship-for-profit and then what are you gonna do? Well, you’re gonna wonder why I lied to you. And that’s one thing I, as a self-professed idiot; never want to do to you, Howlers.
I’d never lie to you.
|
|
|
|
© Copyright / All Rights reserved: Doghouse Boxing 1998-2006
|
|
|
