On Manny’s Fall From The P4P Mountain
Given that the P4P ranking is just a mythical ranking that was said to be created for the great Sugar Ray Robinson, people still go to great lengths to debate and spray saliva in each other’s faces just to get their point across in their own desperate attempt to make the other party or other people see things their way. But what about me? Well I have an opinion too! I’m a blogger, dammit, and that should be saying plenty!
ESPN, SI, and Yahoo! based their action, i.e. relegating Manny Pacquiao to the #2 P4P spot, on Pacquiao’s forgettable performance against Marquez and in comparison to Floyd Mayweather Jr.’s drubbing of the simpleton Victor Ortiz a couple of months ago. While Pacquaio looked puzzled, tentative, human, bewildered – take your pick – against the 38 year old Juan Manuel Marquez, the same Marquez that Floyd handled like a rag doll, Floyd Mayweather Jr. looked like a spectacular bully in his own match against Ortiz. Floyd hit Ortiz with lead rights all night long. And even when Ortiz was not looking he hit him nevertheless- a testimony to the unlikeable persona he’s been trying to foster this past several years to critics and foes alike.
I think these top organizations’ move was something that cannot be faulted. Boxing is not basketball where you can erase an off-night showing with an away game a few weeks after you were hitting air balls. Being on top of the food chain in terms of P4P ranking means you cannot be faulted in the 2-3 times that you fight in a year. The P4P’s last outing has to be spectacular if not dominant for people to stop wagging their tongues and create foment among the ‘important’ people who create their own P4P list as to such and such should remain on top or not. Really, having somebody as the top dog in a BIG list seems silly when that top dog performed like a punching bag ( or so it seems without the compubox numbers) chihuahua in their last fight.
The Ring rankings couldn’t change their P4P list mainly because they’ve backed themselves in a corner by trying to be true to one of their tag lines that say ‘To be the man, you have to beat the man.’ So what the Ring said was that Pacquiao hung on to his #1 ranking by a ‘thin thread’. I call BS. They just couldn’t justify removing him from the top spot without going astray from the path they chose to walk on.
So How Did Manny Really Fare Against Marquez
