Learning from Manny Pacquiao

Despite all of my frustrations with the state of boxing, I set all of the stigmas of the sweet science and it’s many arrogant personalities aside to enjoy the game and personality of Pambansang Kamao, the great Manny Pacquiao.

There are boxers who display the traits that we want in any athlete, in any fighter, and Manny is one of those athletes.

A professional record of 49-3-2 is amazing, but after posting his victory last night against Ricky Hatton, I realized that there is something about Pacquiao’s game that really should be addressed in the context of every combat sport, because it’s a universal factor among athletes who put their bodies on the line for their craft. The reason Pacquiao is so emmensly popular and the reason he is so successful are not the same, but they are not mutually exclusive either (though they are traits that I have heard addressed that way before). Pacquiao, like some great MMA fighters (who I’ll get to in time, I promise), is made great by his combination of trait that are so rare.

Fans love aggressiveness. An aggressive fighter will never be out of work as long as he is healthy enough to mount a substantial, because everyone wants to watch a great fight. Fighters who look for the kill, who know when to move in and who know how to finish, to deliver that final blow, are the cornerstone of every great, substantial sport, especially those which hinge on the knockout.

As great as aggressiveness is, there is a perenial truth that we see in bloom every so often but never really goes away. Patience and planning win bouts and breed consistency. This is why Lyoto Machida is undefeated in MMA and Floyd Mayweather is undefeated in boxing. It is why we knew Chuck’s career was going to go down at some point and why Don Frye never had the consistency to become a UFC champion, despite his tournament victories.

There are a few fighters, though, who can do both, and that’s what makes Pacquiao such an amazing case study for fans of all knockout-centric sports.

It’s almost too easy to liken Pacquiao to Anderson Silva, though those who think Anderson has in some fallen from his imaculate status may miss the most potent part of this comparison.

• Both have an ability to finish with thundering and explosive power, and find the whole when they can.
• Both are credited with some degree of aggression in many of their performances because of that ability to finish, despite the fact that their wars are waged strategically, and off of the back foot.
• Both are champions unafraid, and perhaps even unaffected, by opponents of larger sizes, though we haven’t display this in the same way Pacquiao has.

But a single point remains, and this is the elegant part of the comparison that I hope everyone can grasp, because it’s important.

• Both fighters have been beaten when not at their best, because they refused to fight the easy fight.

This is what every great coach should be telling his young students to watch, because this is the stuff that legends are made of.

In a time where champions like Mike Tyson or Royce Gracie or Muhammad Ali, once considered unbeatable, can have their technique picked apart by dozens of analysts working with tape, we see fighters develop a certain level of conservativism, a disinterest in engaging born out of a fear of having their weaknesses exposed.

Make no mistake, this is the downfall of boxing that I’ve addressed before, and it’s no great secret.

But the lesson itself has gone unmarked. Fans accept mediocre levels of excitement as the price of consistency from boxers, but why? For what?

Manny Pacquiao does not finish every opponent, nor does Anderson Silva (as many casual fans seemed shocked to discover), but when they miss mark of ending the fight before the final bell, they acknowledge of failure.

Pacquiao has been beaten, he’s been stopped, and there’s no reason he should be apologetic about those losses, just as Anderson should not be questioned for his losses to Ryo Chonan and Daiju Takase. Those losses were legitimate, they were revolutionary for the fighters’ careers, to be sure, but they not revelations about the mortality of fighters. They were the bi-products of a gameplan that makes us care about these fighters.

If Anderson Silva had danced away from Chonan and landed the jab-cross for three rounds, Chonan would never have caught a flying heel hook. If Anderson had refused to engage Takase, he would never have ended up on the mount, never have rolled into the triangle that forced him to tap. The same is true for Pacquiao’s loss to Medgoen Singsurat and the decision where he was picked apart by Erik Morales.

What makes these fighters great is the same, and is worth emulating for a fighter who looks to cement a legacy and could care less about being undefeated (as that sometimes carries a certain degree of infamy built around a refusal to engage, as in the case of Machida). If the primary goal is achieving greatness, acclaim and building a repetoire worth being proud of, a history that will be referenced in discussion of great battles in the ring or the cage, it’s important to set aside the stigma of occasional defeat, and focus on attaining victory by conquest.

It is not clear whether the shift in mentality present in boxing is beyond repair, but if the next generation of pugilists wants to be as notable as the last (as Ali, Liston, Frazier, Foreman, etc.) they are not going to be able to model their styles off of the backpedalling light-gloved counterpuncher. They are going to have to look to Manny Pacquiao and see the importance in excitement, in the willingness to go to war, because that is what makes a fighter worth remembering.

END NOTE: This is not a new point for me, though Pacquiao is a case study I haven’t really used in conversation before. When I discussed fighters like Matt Hughes (hardly invincible, even in his prime, but still beloved and respected), people pointed out that it is possible to be both undefeated and aggressive. This is true. Fedor Emelianenko is a prime example. Muhammad Ali before being stripped of his belt in ’67 was another. No challenge presented itself that could not be conquered by those two fighters, but both still embraced that mentality of preparing for war and, as a result, both put their own wellbeing on the line many times. Ali, in particular, showcased the explosive, stalking, counterpunching style that we’ve seen from Pacquiao and Anderson.

Fedor, on the other hand, is more aggressive and, as a result, it has seemed, at some points, that he was not undefeatable and damn near seemed defeated. In that respect (whether overcoming a slam courtesy of Kevin Randleman or a punch from Kazuyuki Fujita) Fedor’s calm and evasiveness have allowed him to maitain his undefeated record, and that sense of invincibility when one looks at the paper. Tyson was similar before his shocking loss to Buster Douglas (though Tyson was a radically different personality and certainly not as psychologically stable as Emelianenko). It is important to acknowledge the possibility that Fedor can be finished by virtue of his gameplan, there is simply no one who can finish him and, in that sense, he is even more impressive, but radically different.