I don't know if you know, but Manny Pacquiao is Filipino. There's a couple ways that helps him in boxing. First is he gets calves of freakish girth so he can punch hard and move fast. Second is he hot blood. Everyone knows about that Latin hot-headedness, but we've got Spanish in our DNA, too. I was hanging out with a workmate's of my dad's who lived in the Philippines. He was an Indian-guy so he had that outsider's distance and he mentioned seeing guys go, in a matter of seconds, from buying rounds of San Miguel to flipping switchblades: "They aren't easily insulted, but I noticed that they have long memories for insults, and what might look like a crazy overreaction is a reaction to something that happened like a year before. Just festered." Also, I probably don't need to explain further if you've already dated a Filipino woman. There was a time when Manny Pacquiao was mostly mean despite that smile. A time when he aimed straight lefts to an imagined spot four inches behind Barrera's head. A time when he sliced up David Diaz's face.
These days, he worries too much about Margarito's orbital bone. Throws simultaneous punches, like something from Street Fighter, one to Clottey's face and one to his body. He shakes hands with Shane Mosley two-dozen times over a 12-round fight. Asks the referee to stop fights instead of fucking stopping them. All Filipinos (and by All Filipinos I mean me and all my uncles) have this weird campy flipside to their hotheadedness. We like games and bad puns and bad karaoke. We have a tendency to play. In the second episode of the most recent 24 / 7, Pacquiao puts two members of his entourage in the ring and giggles as they try to throw hooks. He plays around about what is sometimes murder-sanctioned-by-the-Nevada State Athletic Commission. "You don't play boxing," Joyce Carol Oates writes about the difference between boxing and regular sports.
Before this Saturday’s Pacquiao-Marquez fight, there was a 10-count of silence for the late Joe Frazier who, from all the history I've seen and heard and watched, never played. The documentary Thrilla in Manila opens with a scene at a cockfight in Pacquiao's homeland. Guys make it rain peso bills, whatever denomination is pink, and shout bets at each other. Cut to clips of Frazier-Ali 3, Frazier spitting blood into a bucket and Ali sitting faint in his corner. That Philippine-morning was one hundred and twenty five degrees ("Boiling water for air"). Imelda Marcos, who had a ringside seat for all that in 1974, discusses her closet, filled not with drugs or cash, but of shoes. "Power is never seen," she says, "but always felt." The perfect place and people for Ali, with his impish sense of humor, and Frazier, with his rage.
Even before Ali, Frazier fought with a demon's speed and intensity. He'd bob and weave and throw in-rhythm left-hooks to the kidney and head. Larry Holmes says that getting hit by Frazier would send a buzz through his body and make his teeth chatter. Like sticking finger in electrical socket. Frazier's style is partly a function of his body. He was short and small, a shade over 200 pounds, for a heavyweight so he needed to find his way into range. Even before Ali, Frazier stopped iron-chinned guys like Chuvalo and Quarry. So what happens when you stoke his fire with hate? What happens when a rival calls him "that other type negro" on national TV? Calls him a gorilla? Causes his family to receive death threats before the biggest fight of his life? "Is Joe Frazier A White Man's Champion?" was the title of a Bryant Gumble article.
Ali comes off as a sociopath in the film. He gets crazy eyes when he describes, as he lies on his hotel couch in a white-terry robe, the time he spoke about the joys of at a KKK rally segregation. A much more sinister figure than the grandpa who lit the Olympic torch in '96, hand shaking above the flame. "I would have pushed him in to the fire," Frazier reportedly said. An angry man still, decades removed. Frazier has a lot of vicious lines, the best of which is: "Let him see what changes I've done to his mind and body."
Any other person who acts like this and we hope he gets visited by the ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Future. But we, at least I, like my fighters like this. I like, when I watch the old fight footage, the extra weight of hate in Frazier’s punches. There's that famous knockdown in the 15th round of the first Frazier-Ali fight, Ali getting up at the count of four. It was early in the round, too, so Frazier got to hate him hard for 90 seconds more. Ali's head shook, left-right with each landed punch, as if in disagreement. Or as if he was taking all his words back: "No, I didn't mean it." His head is still shaking today.
Of course, Ali wasn't taking it back. He piled it even higher for 4 more years in the lead up to their third fight. In one sense he damaged Frazier, made him a bitter old man. In another sense, he made him great. That's the general opinion, but people mostly refer to their fighting and their styles. Common knowledge that, when the skill-level is close, a fight between a counterpuncher and a pressure fighter will be a good one. But when I say Ali made Frazier great, I mean mostly through his invective. In CSI and Law and Order they catch murderers via motive. And we know Frazier's motive, saw it in the gorilla toy that Ali punched and made wiggle and rhymed at. Saw when Frazier visibly shifted on national TV as Ali called the decision in their first fight a white-man's decision. Boxers should be killers.
Manny is too human right now to sustain his greatness. He's still very, very good, but I'm not sure he can be as great as he was. Maybe he got dull over the 3 straight tuneups, with Clottey and Margarito and Shane, prior to Saturday night's fight. On Saturday, he fought a good fight and did enough to win. However, he could have fought a different kind of fight, a great one, and destroyed Marquez. I kept thinking during the fight that Manny forgot that he actually has to get hit sometimes in boxing, that he dislikes getting hit more than a great fighter should. Manny will have a good happy life, one of riches and fame, and I still love him more than any fighter fighting. But, as a boxing fan, as inhumanely romantic as it might sound, give me Frazier and his sadness and anger, his slightly slurred speech in late-life. Give me the guy who never let that other guy off the hook, who, at his greatest, never minded taking a punch or even getting killed.
