he World Preps for More Pacquiaosity
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By David Roth
Reuters
Manny Pacquiao: the world’s greatest singing, boxing legislator.
He sings gooey ’70s ballads. He acts in action flicks. He is a member of congress in the Philippines. Manny Pacquiao has a righteous claim on Most Interesting Man in the World status, even before his welterweight title belt comes into play. So of course Pacquiao’s title defense against Shane Mosley Saturday night is a big deal, despite the fact that the 39-year-old Mosley hasn’t won a fight in over two years and is a 6-to-1 underdog. Mosley, though, has little to do with this fight’s considerable appeal and blockbuster potential as a pay-per-view event. “It’s a Manny Pacquiao fight,” Tim Starks writes at the boxing blog the Queensberry Rules. “These days, that’s good enough.”
There’s good reason for that. Pacquiao’s unique icon status in his native country – he represents the Sarangani region in the nation’s congress, and has made this fight part of his campaign to eradicate poverty in his homeland – sets him apart from any fighter in recent memory, and perhaps any in history. But Pacquiao’s boxing resume is plenty astonishing and unprecedented in its own right.
“As the fight approaches, trainers and conditioning experts continue to puzzle over the 32-year-old Filipino champ,” the Journal’s Gordon Marino writes. “The enduring mystery is how he has managed to win titles in a record eight weight classes, from flyweight (112-pound limit) to light-middleweight (154-pound limit). Unlike any fighter in history, he has packed on the pounds without surrendering his searing speed and pulverizing power. While Pacquiao’s fitness isn’t completely off the charts in any one category, he has been able to gain weight without sacrificing any of his fistic skills.”
None of which is to say that Pacquiao isn’t beatable, of course. Mosley, despite not showing terribly well in his last two fights – a loss to Floyd Mayweather Jr. and a stultifying draw with Sergio Mora – is a savvy and aggressive fighter who thinks he knows how to knock Pacquiao out. Of course, Pacquiao has a strategy of his own, as well. The only certainty, once the bell rings, is that things are going to be interesting. With Pacquiao in the ring, it couldn’t be any other way.
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The Los Angeles Lakers have won two straight NBA championships and lost the first two games of their Western Conference semifinal match-up with the Dallas Mavericks, and face the possibility of elimination as the series moves to Dallas. The two don’t quite cancel themselves out. But while it is always difficult to count the Lakers out of a series, their unimpressive 93-81 loss on Wednesday night did much to make it easier.
It doesn’t help the Lakers any that they’re tasked with stopping a white-hot Dirk Nowitzki, and just don’t seem to have anyone who can do that. The Lakers have responded in a notably un-Lakers way, both by playing uptight, anxious basketball and by lashing out with chippiness, such as the bizarre clothesline/punch that Ron Artest hung on Mavs guard J.J. Barea at the end of Wednesday’s game.
Lakers center Andrew Bynum spoke of the team’s “trust issues” after Wednesday’s loss, but Matt Moore offers a simpler diagnosis – without exactly disagreeing with Bynum’s – at CBS Sports: “Against the Mavericks, the Lakers haven’t shown any committment to strategy. They just rolled up on both ends and expected their talent and experience to come through. It didn’t, and now the Lakers have to win four out of the next five games.”
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Is it saber-rattling? Probably, yes, but when the Department of Justice asked the Bowl Championship Series some deceptively simple questions in a letter on Wednesday – the Journal’s Ashby Jones sums them up as, “Tell us why the playoff system the NCAA has set up for college football’s highest level continues to exist” – the repercussions were serious and complicated. The hugely lucrative but generally unpopular BCS will have to answer some difficult questions about fairness, the Kansas City Star’s Blair Kerkhoff writes. But in the New York Daily News, **** Weiss writes that President *****’s anti-BCS push, while grounded in antitrust law, may have a business side to it as well.
“Facing an extreme deficit in a recession, he could use a playoff to generate an additional untapped financial windfall for the nation by transforming a currently nonprofit, multi-million dollar industry into a taxable, for-profit business,” Weiss writes. The saber has been rattled, and so presumably has the BCS.
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For a team that can be great fun to watch and which features perhaps the NHL’s most entertaining player in Alex Ovechkin, the Washington Capitals haven’t enjoyed a great deal of postseason success. But even by those diminished standards, the series sweep that the Tampa Bay Lightning completed Wednesday looks like a new low for this crop of Caps. “The failure was so thorough that it raises questions about the culture inside the dressing room,” the Washington Post’s Tarik El-Bashir writes. “How does such a talented core of players, one that’s endured so much postseason turmoil the past four seasons, get beat twice with their season on the line?” That’s not the sort of question anyone likes answering, but it may have at least one simple answer in the short-term. At Yahoo, Greg Wyshynski writes that this will likely spell the end for colorful Caps coach Bruce Boudreau.
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It’s May, and walk-averse hack-machine Jeff Francoeur is making a push for the American League MVP in Kansas City and the Cleveland Indians have looked as good as any team in baseball. But while fans know how to negotiate the illogic of April/May baseball, the weirdnesses of office softball can be something of a mystery even to veteran players. What are the protocols on high-fiving your boss? Is it cool if your kid plays? And what’s the deal with that one dude wearing the stirrup socks?
“Work softball can be a rewarding bonding experience, but it’s not without its hazards,” the Journal’s Jason Gay writes in his definitive guide to office softball. “The usual boundaries become blurred, and office greatness doesn’t mean softball acuity. That executive who just let a ground ball trickle through his legs might have the authority to fire you tomorrow. And that co-worker whose name you still don’t know after six years WILL be the best player on the team, and you will feel ashamed.”
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