The MGM Grand in Las Vegas was aglow with moxy and masculinity Saturday night when Manny Pacquiao bested Keith Thurman via hard-fought split-decision—and that glowing had nothing to do with the lack of real VADA testing for either fighter.
These guys actually put on a show and, for the first time in a long time, you could honestly say that fans got their money’s worth from a big ticket pay-per-view (or subscription-per-view) main event.
Thurman surprised more than a few (myself included) by actually taking the fight to Senator Manny rather than trying to “Mayweather” a points win. Of course, he paid for it by getting dropped at the end of the first round as he pulled back from an exchange, but, to his credit, he went right back to the fight the following round.
Counting on having the sharper reflexes and better conditioning, Thurman stayed in the pocket and tried to outwork the future first ballot Hall of Famer. But, while Thurman may have been the better athlete of the two, he wasn’t the sharper or more intuitive fighter. Pacquiao was getting the better of the exchanges until the second half of the fight when, perhaps, his 40 years started weighing on him and they cost him a fraction of a second here and there.
Thurman, however, couldn’t come back enough to win the fight (except on Glenn Feldman’s cross-eyed scorecard), in part because Manny is Manny and he never folded, never stopped pushing forward.
A thudding tenth-round body shot from Pacquiao put Thurman through all kinds of suffering and, more importantly, took the starch from what was looking to be some serious Thurman comeback momentum.
At the end of the entertaining affair, two of the judges’ scorecards were on the mark at 115-112 for Pacquiao while Feldman issued a “give Thurman every benefit of every doubt” 114-113 score on Thurman’s behalf.
So, what did we learn from this (un)passing of the torch bout?
Well, first of all, we learned that Manny is still an elite-level welterweight.
Four years ago, when media “experts” were making excuses for his loss to the hated Floyd Mayweather, they said he lost because, at 36, he was too slow, too diminished. Two years later when he was mauled and wrestled to a controversial decision loss in Australia by Australia’s own Jeff Horn, the same crew practically begged the then-38-year-old Manny to hang ‘em up because now, clearly, he was done.
But Manny was never really “done.” Maybe slowed down to an extent, and more cautious because of it, but not “done.” Brutalizing Lucas Matthysse and dominating Adrien Broner proved that.
And, Saturday night, he proved that he was a top 3 welter by registering a decisive win over a legit top 3 welter.
We also learned that Thurman isn’t quite as good as he thinks he is—and, actually, that’s a good thing.
Thurman, himself, called it “blessings in lessons” in the post-fight interview and the lessons learned against Pacquiao should center around how athleticism is simply not enough to carry you past the really good, really motivated elite-level fighters in the sport.
“One-Time” has been fooling himself for years about how hard he hits, how cerebral he is in the ring, and how, generally, all-around good he is. The truth is that he’s never been the complete package of talent and skill, never performed up to his full potential because he’s never had a cohesive ring strategy to make him greater than the sum of his parts. He lost to Pacquiao, precisely because of this. It’s time to work on something beyond a seat-of-pants game plan before his physical abilities begin to diminish.
Thurman should also be learning soon enough how much more valuable a noble loss is than a cynical, negative win. He absolutely had the ability to throw a wet blanket over everything by hopping on his bike and avoiding as much actual conflict as possible. Instead, he put on a show. Kudos to him for that—his stock will rise more in this kind of defeat than if he had stunk up the place in a win.
All in all, Saturday was a good night for boxing. When two good fighters actually fight, rather than try and back their way into a safe victory, everybody wins. All Hail Manny…Thank You, Keith.
