Global 2012: Manny Pacquiao Knocked Out by Juan Manuel Marquez

English: Manny Pacquiao, right before the Erik Morales fight. (original text) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Juan Manuel Marquez absolutely crushed Manny Pacquiao with a straight right hand at the end of the sixth round of their epic fourth fight, sending him careening to the canvas, face down and unconscious, and scoring a massive victory that completely alters the state of boxing today.

In Pacquiao's last fight, the controversial outcome led to a wave of outcry and attention. Here, the outcome is decisive, but even more buzz-worthy. The Pacquiao vs. Marquez results were brutally shocking, leaving everybody watching the fight, ringside or at home, shaking their head in awe and surprise.

Many people were siding with Marquez to win the fight, including myself, but a knockout victory was completely off the table. Yet, in boxing, one punch can change everything, and a pinpoint Marquez right hand did just that.

The official time of the stoppage for the Pacquiao vs. Marquez results was at 2:59 of Round 6, ending a back-and-forth battle that had already seen each man touch the canvas. Marquez knocked Pacquiao down in the Round 3, and Pacquiao returned the favor in Round 5, in a spectacular round of action.

In the sixth, Pacquiao seemed to be taking control of the fight. Marquez had blood streaming from his nose and splattered all over his face, and seemed to be in increasingly serious trouble.

However, just a tick before the bell, Marquez landed that monster counter right hand. Pacquiao was instantly out. The fight was waved off, and Pacquiao remained motionless for several minutes afterward. Eventually, Pacquiao would sit up on the canvas, in a clear state of disbelief and disgust.

All three judges had the fight scored 47-46 for Pacquiao at the time of the stoppage, as did I when I was watching the fight. He had clearly won the first two rounds before he suffered the knockdown, and then was assuming control of the fight before that thunderous right hand landed.

For Marquez, it's the biggest win of his career, the culmination of eight years of close calls, near misses and mental anguish, and a likely Knockout of the Year as well.

As for Pacquiao, in the build-up to this fight, I wondered what would happen if Marquez won the fight. The two most likely outcomes were that a Pacquiao vs. Marquez 5 fight would take place, or that Pacquiao would retire. Never though did I imagine that Marquez would win via a brutal one-punch knockout.

After the fight, Pacquiao seemed hesitant to commit to anything when interviewed by Larry Merchant. However, he did seem open to yet another match taking place between the two legendary rivals.

The Pacquiao vs. Marquez results provide a huge jolt to the boxing landscape. Everything will be radically different moving ahead, in terms of which fighters are at the top and regarded as untouchable, and which are further down the totem pole.

The fight and the knockout were reminiscent to me of when Roy Jones, who was a commentator for Pacquiao-Marquez 4 coincidentally, got laid out by Antonio Tarver in their rematch. It was a sudden and dramatic one punch ending not only to a fight, but to an aura of invincibility, and it was an immediate line of demarcation for when a legendary fighter no longer had it.

If Pacquiao chooses to continue fighting, he'll still be one of the best fighters in the world. But he will no longer be "Manny Pacquiao", pound for pound champion.

Tonight will be a night that boxing fans, hardcore and casual, will always remember. The image of Pacquiao face down on the canvas, Marquez himself in disbelief standing on the other side of the ring, is something I'll never forget.

http://sports.yahoo.com/news/manny-pacquiao-knocked-juan-manuel-marquez-epic-fourth-063400880--box.html

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Global 2012: Referee's blatant error is another sign Olympic boxing should be abolished

Headgear and boxing gloves are mandatory in Olympic boxing and amateur boxing. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
The time has finally come to dump boxing as an Olympic sport.

It would be devastating for young people around the world, but the amateur version of the sport is so corrupt there is no saving it. The death penalty might be the only option.

When competition isn't on the up and up, when the referee is playing an active role in deciding who wins a fight, when the judges conveniently look the other way, it's no longer an amateur sporting competition. It's the WWE.

Given the vile nature of those who run amateur boxing, the only shock at these London Games is that a referee hasn't been caught passing a foreign object to a boxer to slip into his glove.

AIBA, the governing body of amateur boxing, dismissed referee Ishanguly Meretnyyazov of Turkmenistan on Thursday after a bout on Wednesday between Satoshi Shimizu of Japan and Magomed Abdulhamidov of Azerbaijan. Shimizu knocked Abdulhamidov down six times in the third round, but Meretnyyazov didn't rule any of them a knockdown.

Meretnyyazov kept ordering Abdulhamidov to get up, as if Abdulhamidov was going down of his own volition. He was hurt by punches thrown by his opponent, who should have won by stoppage in the third round.

But when Meretnyyazov didn't called them knockdowns, the bout went to the scorecards, where the byzantine computerized scoring system that was put into place to prevent just such atrocities committed yet another one.

Abdulhamidov entered the decisive third round with a 10-7 edge. The third round was scored 10-10, so Abdulhamidov won a 20-17 decision he clearly didn't deserve. About the only contact Abdulhamidov created in the third round was when he hit the canvas.

Under the scoring system, five judges have punch pads at ringside. When a judge sees a punch land, he is supposed to push the button for either the red corner or the blue corner. If three button-pushes for the same fighter register within a second of each other, that fighter scores a point. At the end, the fighter with the most points wins.

The Japanese immediately protested and AIBA overturned the outcome. It ruled that Abdulhamidov went down at least three times from punches. Under AIBA rules, when one boxer goes down three times in a round from punches, the referee must stop the contest.

The computerized system was designed to eliminate subjectivity and the potential for abuse from judges who could be bribed or simply would favor one country's fighters over another's. It was put into place after perhaps the most egregious Olympic decision of all, when Roy Jones Jr. of the United States was robbed in the 1988 gold medal match against Park Si Hun of South Korea, the host nation.

Jones so badly out-boxed Park that it was obvious to even first-time observers who'd won. Yet, the gold went to Park, and Jones had to settle for what might have been the most unsatisfactory silver medal in Olympic history. So incomprehensible was the decision that AIBA awarded Jones the Val Barker Trophy as Most Outstanding Boxer of the Games despite the loss.

Rather than preventing abuse, though, the computerized scoring system simply makes it easier for a judge of a mind to do so to cheat.

In theory, if an Olympic boxing judge wanted to favor a particular fighter, all he or she would have to do would be to repeatedly press that fighter's button. That would greatly increase the odds of a push within a second of two others and would help pile up points.

There has to be great suspicion about the veracity of all officiating at these Games, given a BBC report from September that alleged Azerbaijan was promised two boxing gold medals in exchange for a $10 million loan to the AIBA.

http://sports.yahoo.com/news/olympics--ishanguly-meretnyyazov-satoshi-shimizu-magomed-abdulhamidov-knockdowns-corruption-judges-.html

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