We can get to the actual fisticuffs on Friday. Today I want to talk cash-money.
In that I am not entirely compelled by Saturday’s mega-match-up, I am of the opinion that the most interesting result will be rendered not on Saturday night but some time in the following week when the pay-per-view numbers roll in. I have written elsewhere about the PPV implications of Pac/Hatton (check out Large on the NBC tip and all…) and Steve Kim has a great piece on the same issue today over at MaxBoxing titled “Can Pacquiao-Hatton Reach the Magic Mark?”
The most interesting thing that Kim points out is that Bob Arum seems to be setting that magic mark at a milly, while Richard Schaefer from Golden Boy is more comfortable with a half a mill as the dividing line between success and failure.
Everyone, though, is crowing about the gate. It’s already a sell-out, whereas Pac/De La Hoya never sold out, didn’t come close. And, as you probably remember, Pac/Oscar did a very impressive 1.25 million PPV buys.
To my mind, though, particularly given the nature of these two fighters, ticket sales are no indication of the PPV future of the enterprise. Everybody knows that both Manny Pacquiao and Ricky Hatton have insanely devoted fans who would follow them to the ends of the earth to see them fight, or fuck, or fart. Or fish. It’s a good thing, no doubt, and it’s without question the reason that Hatton is even in this fight in the first place, but I’m betting it will have little bearing upon how many Americans throw down fifty-plus smackers to watch the thing in the comfort of their own homes.
I was too busy last week doing various things (including spending some time at a certain gym for a behind-the-scenes piece about a certain TV show that hypes a certain mega-fight on May 2nd… I’ll keep you all posted on that) to get a prognostification piece up on Froch/Taylor and JuanMa/Penalosa, and in that I didn’t get my opinions in print, I won’t sing my praises too hard.
But, my brothers, let me sing them softly. I had both fights nailed. I guess that’s not too exciting in the case of the Puerto Rican Pummeling that went down in Bayamon last night. Everybody knew that Lopez was going to beat on Penalosa like he was Itchy and Gerry was Scratchy. And so it was. Need we discuss the whole situation any further? JuanMa is a badass muhfuh, straight up, and anyone out there who doesn’t believe the hype at this point simply is not paying attention. Get him Marquez or Vazquez already and let the Mexico/Puerto Rico war drums beat late into the night.
As for Froch/Taylor… well, honestly, I was about 70/30 that Froch was going to win this thing, but I did think there was a chance that Jermain would knock him out. After watching Froch/Pascal, one of the great lost fights of last year’s roster of incredible slugfests, it did occur to me that Jermain probably was going to hit Froch with some wangdangers and that those bombs might tell the tale.
Admittely I was far from the only one thinking this was Jermain’s only chance to get the W, and oh, OH, what a chance it was. Talk about your deja vu all over again. There he is with the title on the line and a rugged, ugly white boy in front of him who is too damn rugged for his own good practically begging Jermain to send him napping down Comatose Lane. A couple of wild, monster right hands later and it’s DOWN GOES FROCH! DOWN GOES FROCH!
As you guys probably are aware, Manny Pacquiao threw out the first pitch at the Giants/Padres game last night at AT&T Park in San Francisco. I was there following Pac Man around for The Sporting News, and though I intended to write a piece for them about the evening’s events, it was such a chaotic and indescribable scene, and I somehow managed to finagle myself such intimate access to it all, that I ended up weaving together a video out of a bunch of clips that I shot over the course of the night.
Now I’m no videographer, or editor, as you will see. And, as I said, it was all shot on a Flip, so it ain’t exactly pro. Quite the contrary, in fact, almost embarrassingly un-pro. But hopefully it conveys at least a little of my experience of being an ad hoc member of Pacquiao’s entourage for an hour or so of a very strange event. Because I found it to be an exhilarating experience. There really is something kind of magical about the guy, such a tiny little dude in the center of all this Beatle-esque mayhem exuding an overwhelmingly mellow, pleasant, peaceful vibe. It’s hard to believe he’s such a ferocious fighter, and easy to see why he inspires such devotion. It’s exciting too as a boxing fan. Our sport lives and dies on these larger-than-life personalities, and Manny Pacquiao, all five foot six and a hundred whatever pounds of him, is larger than large right now, not to mention infinitely larger than Large.
The New York Post has reported that our man Freddy Sez, subject of the immensely popular short documentary Bangin’ Pots, is being denied his customary gratis entrance into the new stadium. I spoke to him just before this past opening day, and Freddy was afraid the Yankees wouldn’t let him into the stadium. I thought he was just being paranoid. Twenty years into his run as the self-described “unofficial Yankees mascot”, the guy is an institution. I figured even if the Yankees didn’t really want his somewhat ramshackle vibe corrupting their gleaming monolith, they wouldn’t risk the avalanche of bad PR they’d be certain to get if they shut him out. Obviously, I thought wrong.
Come now, young Steinbrenners. Do we really have to tell you the right thing to do here? In his more volatile days, your pop played the mean-spirited bully better than anyone, but he’s also an intensely sentimental man who prizes loyalty above all else. Does anyone honestly believe that Freddy was allowed to roam the stadium for twenty years without the boss’s blessing? If George was healthy and at the new stadium every day, he would never allow shutting Freddy out. It’s profoundly ungenerous, it’s bad PR, and worst of all–just ask a Cubs fan–it’s just the sort of thing that pisses off the baseball gods.
Perhaps Anderson Silva should consider changing his nickname from ‘The Spider†to ‘The Market Killer.â€
Almost six months after he turned Chicago MMA fans against him following an uninspiring victory over Patrick Cote at UFC 90, Silva pulled off the same kind of forgettable performance against Thales Leites in Montreal last night. At times Silva looked bored, other times he looked like he was just toying with Leites. Most importantly, he didn’t look like the pound-for-pound best MMA fighter in the world.
Look, I know it’s wrong to lay all the blame on Silva’s shoulders. Lord knows Leites didn’t exactly come out guns blazing. And as we all know, it’s hard to tango when your dance partner refuses to, um, dance. But when you’re considered the best in the world, you should be able to get past those kinds of dilemmas, especially when Silva did show flashes of brilliance throughout the fight.
Watching the fight, I got the sense that Silva could end things in an instant if he so chose. He clearly didn’t want to go to the ground with Leites, but when he did, he proved to be better than his fellow Brazilian fighter. So why didn’t he turn it on in the third, fourth and fifth when the crowd was booing him? Why didn’t he try to prove that the Silva who danced for three rounds against Cote was long gone? Your guess is as good as mine.
(For those of you who didn’t see it, check the post below for my welcome to our old friend Ariel back into the No Mas fold. And now without further ado, I turn it over to the man himself -L)
So where did we last leave each other?
Well if memory serves, I believe it was around UFC 71. You remember UFC 71, right? That was the time Chuck Liddell finally fell back to earth after getting knocked out by Quinton “Rampage” Jackson in the first round.
Since then, “The Iceman” has gone 1-2, leaving many MMA fans wondering if Liddell’s better days are officially behind him.
Well, I am here to say that those doubters are wrong. Dead wrong.
Look, I don’t think Liddell will be challenging for the UFC light heavyweight title anytime soon. I know he’s mentioned in the press lately that he thinks he’s one or two wins away from getting a title shot. Never mind that talk. I can think of at least five people who currently deserve a shot at current champion Rashad Evans more than Liddell.
But if Liddell focuses on one fight at a time and is matched up against the right opponents, I think he can keep this little career of his going for at least four to five more fights. In other words, he’s not Ali circa 1981. Not yet, at least.
Long-time readers of the Mas no doubt will remember our old friend, The Franchise, who wrote a beloved column for a while here, Sharpshootin’ with The Franchise, before moving on to make quite a name for himself in the world-at-large as an MMA journalist and all-around omnifactotum (that’s our man below interviewing some dude whose name escapes me right now).
His name, The Franchise’s real name as it turns out (I didn’t even know this myself until, like, two days ago… I’d never seen him without his “Franchise” mask either) is Ariel Helwani, and as my title alludes to in no subtle fashion, we here at The Mas are very proud to announce the return of Ariel to these pages.
For some time now, we’ve wanted to start regularly covering MMA at the Mas, but though I dabble in the ways of the octagon, I am not the guy to do the job right. Ariel most definitely is that guy. Holms is straight up No Mas to his core, and what’s more, he’s WAY up in the game. You don’t believe me on that, check his interview with the Iceman over at Versus for a little UFC 97 appetizer.
Ariel is currently the point man for Versus.com’s MMA coverage and will soon be contributing to Fanhouse. And now he also can be found right here at the Mas, where he will soon be to all things MMA as Large is to all things sweet science. I can’t tell you how excited I am about that, and how happy I am to have him back in the fold. You can look for his first installment, a UFC 97 preview, later on today. Until then, give it up and turn it loose for the return of our soul brother number one. Welcome back, Ariel – make yourself at home.
As a tribute to the old Yankee Stadium (or the newer incarnation of the old Yankee Stadium) we made a short documentary last year about Fred Schuman aka Freddy Sez. On the way from his Upper West Side apartment to the Bronx for the Stadium’s last opening day, the eighty-three year old tells tells the story of his transformation into the Yankees’ pan-and-spoon-carrying unofficial mascot. We’ve saved it for this moment, and we hope you enjoy.
I thought I would direct you guys to some of my work from over at The Sporting News family, two pieces of which are long ones from today – a consideration of Oscar De La Hoya’s career in the wake of his retirement announcement, and a heartfelt farewell to the beloved Harry Kalas. I also include a link to a short piece I wrote about Money May showing up in the most unlikely of places… the Masters.
De La Hoya Retires, Legacy Is a Mixed Bag
“He leaves behind him one of the most high-profile, well-remunerated and hotly debated careers in the history of the sweet science. On one hand, you have a man who was THE face of boxing for the last 10 years, who literally carried the sport on his shoulders in one super-fight after another. On the other hand, you have a man whose fighting legacy is at least as entwined with his humiliations as his triumphs, a fact that makes him a complicated figure for the hardcore followers of the fight game.”
Harry Kalas, R.I.P.
“As many have said yesterday and today, Harry Kalas was quite simply THE voice of the Phillies, but for me, along with Whitey, he was also the soundtrack of my childhood. If I hear just a few words from either of those two guys, wherever I might be in the world, I’m transported to a time and a place that lives now only inside my mind, when I was growing up in suburban Philadelphia and those two voices carried with them all the magic and mystery that is ‘baseball†to a young boy.”
AdWatch: Floyd Mayweather Makes His Masters Debut
“You’re watching the Masters, lounging on the couch, listening to the sonorous burble of Bill Macatee, Verne Lundquist and Nick Faldo’s endless stream of self-reverential congratulation. The birds are chirping, the sun is shining, you’re half-asleep, life is good. And then, next thing you know, there’s flipping Floyd Mayweather in your face. To put it mildly, the mood is blown.”
(No Mas has partnered with Paul Lukas of Uni Watch and the inimitable Reverend Vince Anderson on a campaign to call the new ballpark in Flushing, like the old one, Shea Stadium. As you may have surmised, there will be t-shirts, but our more glorious purpose is here explained by Reverend Vince, who will be performing his singular version of Meet the Mets before my interview with David Wright Tuesday night at 21 Mercer.) I moved to Queens from California in 1994. I lived in a little apartment right off the 7 train, minutes from Shea Stadium. As a kid in California, I was raised believing that the American League was the league of the Devil, so there was never much of choice for me when deciding which New York team I would root for. I did give Yankee stadium a try and was not impressed. When I ascended the mighty escalator at Shea, to my seats in the Upper Deck for the first time, I felt like I was home.
As I got to know the history of Shea, the immediate connection I had grew deeper. I read about the baptizing of home plate with water from the the Hudson and East rivers, representing the Giants and the Dodgers, the legacy of the National League in New York City. I grew to admire the renegade spirit of Bill Shea, and his several attempts to bring real baseball back to the city.
Everyone, though, is crowing about the gate. It’s already a sell-out, whereas Pac/De La Hoya never sold out, didn’t come close. And, as you probably remember, Pac/Oscar did a very impressive 1.25 million PPV buys.
