Los Angeles : Boxing is the gift that keeps on giving. It is why the great wordsmiths gravitated to it.
It is why Red Smith could easily find poetry in its violence, why Jim Murray scoffed at anybody wishing for the departure of Mike Tyson.
"Lord, no," Murray would say. "He's 10 columns a year." Damon Runyon painted such wonderful word pictures of boxing characters that, over time, his name was used as a category for those with special quirks. It hasn't changed, only gotten better. Smith, Murray and Runyon cry out from their graves for another day to write.
Manny Pacquiao would have intrigued and inspired them to combinations of words worthy of plaques, headstones and literary immortality. They would not only see him as this skinny, hungry child from the mean streets of General Santos City, in the Philippines, and later the meaner streets of Manila, but for what he has become and how beautifully he has handled it. Like none other, they would articulate how an impoverished child from a third-world country had become a hero on the American sports scene, while maintaining dignity and perspective.
Delightful wackiness
They would make the contrast between how he shares fame and fortune and how so many of our homegrown heroes never have even an idle thought about giving back. Even better, they would find, as they always did, the delightful wackiness of the people connected to Pacquiao and would quickly make the point that, of them all, he is the most stable.
They would be in full typist mode in the aftermath of Saturday's annihilation by Pacquiao of a slow, plodding, 6-inches-taller Mexican named Antonio Margarito.
It looked like Paul Bunyan being taken to the woodshed by his 10-year-old son. They would find a way to, respectfully, point out to Margarito that a boxer who just made $5 million (Dh18.3 million) while having the orbital bone fractured and jammed with pieces of eye muscle needs to take that $5 million, thank God daily, and retire to a life of bouncing his children on his knee.
They would have a field day with the never-ending manoeuvres of Pacquiao's promoter, the veteran master of all angles, Bob Arum.
Arum now calls Pacquiao the best fighter he has ever seen, even though he has seen, and promoted, Muhammad Ali and Oscar dela Hoya.
Our writers would quickly make the translation for readers who might be a bit slow on boxing-promoter-speak. Best fighter also means biggest payday fighter. Nor would they miss Arum moving immediately to what's next for Pacquiao (and him). As every boxing fan knows, the ultimate match is Pacquiao against Floyd Mayweather Jr.
Arum was quoted a few days ago as saying that Pacquiao would have a birthday party on December 17 and they had better hear of Mayweather's interest by then. Ah, the old birthday-party deadline trick.
Our beloved authors would find volumes of fascination in Pacquiao's trainer, Freddie Roach, who, by his own admission, took five fights too many in his own career.
Common sense
Roach has Parkinson's disease, the likely result of punches absorbed in those last five fights. Yet while he struggles physically, Roach has more common sense about what will happen and what should happen next for Pacquiao than anybody.
When Roach said Pacquiao would handle a bigger, more famous Oscar dela Hoya, the boxing world laughed. Roach was right. He had a plan for his fighter to handle Miguel Cotto. It worked. Same with Joshua Clottey and Margarito. Four bigger trees, all becoming kindling.
Now Roach says his fighter, who also happens to be a congressman in the Philippines and who seems increasingly more interested in politics than punching, should consider retiring from the ring. Pacquiao has had 57 fights, and Roach knows what five too many means. Pacquiao already could be three-fifths there.
Our wordsmiths would find a wealth of material in the Mayweather family, which seems as destined to jail time as to ring time.
