The Retirement Plan

The Retirement Plan

Everyone wants to fight the champ because of the big payday. Shane Mosley, far removed from his slugging days, took Pacquiao’s retirement plan and ran away with it. Writer Rick Olivares thought he was watching a boxing match and not a track meet.*

Street poet Bundini Brown once coined the phrase for Muhammad Ali’s fighting style – “float like a butterfly; sting like a bee.”

It’s a sound boxing tactic. Hit and run. One that can frustrate opponents. Sugar Ray Leonard used that to devastating fashion that an exasperated Roberto Duran simply said, “No mas.”

Another Sugar -- Shane Mosley who had carved out a reputation for fighting – reprised history. Although it was he who was quite exasperating not only to Manny Pacquiao but to his own corner and to the millions watching the fight.

Mosley has fought for close to two decades. And all throughout his career, he had never been knocked out. With Father Time catching up on him and facing a foe had didn’t have much hope of beating, what was his only recourse? He saw how the champ has bludgeoned all his previous foes into submission and retirement. And the one who survived was Joshua Clottey by simply throwing his arms up so that he would not have to make a doctor’s appointment.

Mosley tested Manny in the early rounds. After he was floored in the third round – by a rocket to the jaw – but he got up as if to say, “What the heck was I thinking of?” and chose to disengage. The American was never knocked out but his career most certainly has.

So the question once more is posed, “Is there anybody else?”

The fight with an ageing Mosley might have been one final payday for a fighter on his last legs. It was also the appetizer to the entrée that is Floyd Mayweather Jr.

But the former pound-for-pound king has been also doing his own running away – jawing at Pacquiao but staying clear of any skirmish. And that leaves Juan Manuel Marquez, Zab Judah, Tim Bradley, or even Amir Khan as potential foes.

However, do they want to? Save perhaps for Marquez who still clings to the belief that he beat Pacquiao and would like another crack at him, all have to wrestle with the some brutal truths.

The lesson from the Margarito-Pacquiao match up is – “fight Manny at your own risk.” Since his remarkable trilogy with Erik Morales, the new pound-for-pound king has ended the careers of many a great fighter – Oscar de la Hoya, Ricky Hatton, Joshua Clottey, Antonio Margarito, and perhaps Shane Mosley. A fight with Manny is like preparing one’s retirement plan.

“I just fought the best fighter in the world. He has power, exceptional power, that I have never been hit with before,” gushed Mosley.

Shane’s retirement package? Five million bucks and maybe a little more to make those payments to his ex-wife and four children according to TMZ.

Normally, with every fight, the vanquished have sung high praise to Pacman. But there’s an alarming trend that some are trying to befriend Pacquiao – play nice and preempt matters with a mutual admiration society so they are spared a facial in the ring.

Pacman, lulled into the faux friendliness, would land punches here and there instead of laying the smackdown foes. Against Mosley, the congeniality vibe went a little longer as both fighters’ corners were aghast.

Thundered trainer Naazim Richardson to Mosley: “He is not your friend!”

In the opposite corner, Freddie Roach asked the same, “Why are you touching gloves? Is he your friend? You’re supposed to knock this guy out.”

Mosley tried to test Pacquiao in the early rounds. Once he got a taste of the Filipino’s power particularly in the third round, the game plan switched to one of survival while throwing the occasional jab then backpedalling. Mosley had his payday and while the evident would unlikely tarnish his stellar boxing career, he wanted one last thing to keep intact – that he not be knocked out.

After a push that sent Pacquiao to the canvass that referee Kenny Bayless erroneously called a knockdown, the champ had enough of playing Mr. Nice Guy. When he could, or more appropriately, when Pacquiao caught Mosley, he tried to knock him into next week. But the American had largely escaped unscathed in the earlier rounds and he was able to float away from the bee stings.

It was a win – Pacquiao’s 53^rd in his career – but an unsatisfying one despite the unanimous decision and no fault of his own. And yet, he has more than 20 million reasons to be gleeful.

But for Manny Pacquiao, he’s fast running out of opponents who will test his mettle… and the platitudes that writers like me have to serve him.

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This appears in the next issue of Philippines Free Press that will be out next week.


Photo from ESPN