Hey, Manny, learn from Joe

Pacquiao's return to the ring at 46, a bad idea

A friend of mine heard the news and had to reach out, immediately. “I know you’re a boxing fan,” he wrote, “did you hear Manny Pacquiao is coming out of retirement?”
I had heard it and hoped it wasn’t true. But it was. The pride of the Philippines was returning to the ring. Matt Moret’s story in the New York Times confirmed it.

“Manny Pacquiao will return to boxing on July 19 to challenge Mario Barrios for the WBC welterweight championship in Las Vegas, according to ESPN,” Moret wrote. “ It will be Pacquiao’s first professional fight in nearly four years. The report confirms a plan WBC president Mauricio Sulaiman laid out on May 2. “At this time, Mario Barrios is going to face Manny Pacquiao in July,” Sulaiman said. “That’s a tremendous fight.”

Oh, brother. That’s a bad decision and at his age, 46, after the punches he’s already taken in 72 professional fights -- 62 wins, 8 losses and 2 draws — and 64 amateur fights, he’s cruising for a bruising, as the old phrase goes.

In his prime, probably 20 years ago, Pacquiao was a formidable fighter, one of the best, smartest southpaw fighters we’d seen since perhaps Marvelous Marvin Hagler. But coming back at 46 to face a guy who’s 29-2-1 with 18 knockouts, a guy who’s not even 30, seems as flawed a decision as the 37-year-old Joe Louis made in 1951, coming out of retirement to face up-and-coming Rocky Marciano, a rough-and-tumble 27-year-old from Brockton, Massachusetts.

An aging Joe Louis, one of the all-time greats, was no match for Rocky Marciano

Unfortunately for Louis, who had held the heavyweight title for an unprecedented dozen years, he had already retired once before and the heavyweight title had moved on. But the Internal Revenue Service’s share of Joe’s purses somehow didn’t pass muster and now, they were after him. Though many Americans were really upset to learn of the IRS hounding Joe Louis, someone who had been such an inspiration to American soldiers in World War II. But in those days, you didn’t dare mess with IRS.

Really, the reason Louis agreed to fight the promising contender Marciano was money. You certainly hope that isn’t the reason Manny is coming back to the ring.

I’ve known a few fighters over the years and have been watching boxing since I was a kid. There’s a built-in trick in a fighter’s brain. Whether he’s 37 or even 47, if he’s kept himself in pretty good shape, it’s been years since he’s had to take the punishment that comes with training and sparring, he feels great, eyes this current crop of fighters who he’s certain aren’t in his class and he thinks he could easily beat them.

It seems as if it’s just about impossible for these guys to walk away. Marvelous Marvin Hagler did after he lost a disputed decision (I think he won) against the last-minute flurries of Sugar Ray Leonard and was brokenhearted. But just about everybody else comes back at least once. Or so it seems.

Having watched the awful end of the career of Muhammad Ali, I couldn’t even watch the Larry Holmes fight, it felt as if Holmes was hitting me. And there was Holmes’ return to the ring against Mike Tyson — the same scenario as Louis-Marciano — and you’d never seen a more awkward knockout.

Reading of Pacquiao’s decision made me immediately think of the Louis-Marciano fight, one that I watched and watched and watched growing up. As I’ve written before, one of my most memorable Xmas presents was a DeJur projector and I had started collecting boxing films well before I really knew or understood the history of the sport. So when I saw the list of potential fights available and saw Louis-Marciano, I had to get it.

Anybody who knew anything about boxing knew how great Joe Louis was. And seeing him fight Rocky Marciano, wow, I couldn’t wait. I remember sending the $8.50 to Hauppauge, New York to Ring Classics and when the Super 8 film arrived, I called my friend Mark Fountain to come see it. Or maybe we went to his house. The projector light wasn’t all that strong, Mark’s basement was dark as night, so maybe we watched it there.

But when I saw Louis, bald spot on the top of his head, face looking puffy, his movements slow, deliberate, not the lethal fighting panther I’d seen in his rematch with Max Schmeling or some of his other early fights, I was worried. Marciano was so crude, if he’d have come in dressed like Fred Flintstone I wouldn’t have been surprised. But he could hit. Couldn’t do anything else but he hit so hard, he didn’t really need anything else.

And poor Joe, his once-piston-like jab just didn’t do what it once did. He used to be a lethal combination puncher, his 1-2 was devastating. And here, it was one punch at a time. Marciano made no attempts to box, a jab was a waste of his energy as far as he was concerned. He was in there to slug and though it seemed his punches were coming far enough away that a sharp boxer could have avoided them, Joe couldn’t.

The end came in the 8th, Joe was pinned against the ropes when Rocky hit him with back-to-back left hooks (not a previously advertised weapon) and a devastating right hand that flattened Joe. I’d read that Joe’s friend, Sugar Ray Robinson, sensing the end was near, had started towards ringside and he arrived at the canvas just about the same time the great ex-champion did. Except Joe was on his back.

It was not the kind of thing you wanted to see. Mark and I were depressed, seeing Joe go out like that, never imagining the same thing for our hero, Muhammad Ali many years later against the likes of Larry Holmes or Trevor Berbick. That was Ali’s final fight and one I vowed never to see, the only one of his I’d missed since he won the title from Sonny Liston in 1964.

For one thing, Manny is a lighter weight fighter so maybe Barrios’ punches won’t be as devastating as a heavyweight’s wallop. Manny was awfully good in his day, there’s a chance he could turn back the clock. But there generally was a reason you decided to retire in the first place. Probably a very good reason. The voices in your head now might be telling you that you can do it and maybe you can. But more likely, it’s just an echo, noise from another time, another era, whispers of one more night of glory. Dangerous whispers. Very dangerous.

HERE’S A COLORIZED VERSION OF THE LOUIS-MARCIANO FIGHT