Illusion vs. Reality
posted by Large
Last night was quite the tale of two fighters. You had the much-anticipated replay of Pacquiao/Hatton, where one man, heralded by all to be the pound-for-pound king of the sport, staged an onslaught of fury and precision that marked his ascension into the stratosphere of superstardom. Then you had the decidedly unanticipated rematch of Dawson/Tarver, where another man, heralded by many to be among the sport’s pound-for-pound best, slogged his way to a more-difficult-than-it-looked unanimous decision in a fight that few wanted to see in the first place.
Of the two performances, I was more impressed with Dawson’s. Which is not to say that I’m more impressed with Dawson, period. No no no. But in these two arbitrarily linked fights, I thought he faced up to a much stiffer challenge, one that admittedly will not earn him much praise.
Part I. Flogging a Dead Hatton
Watching Pacquiao/Hatton again, I was even more overwhelmed with what were my initial observations of the affair when I saw it live. Hatton was amateurish from the get-go, an utter joke. With his hands at his chest, he bulled forward recklessly, chin first, with no lateral motion and no head movement whatsoever, seemingly under the impression that if he repeatedly threw himself at his man with frenetic abandon while waving his arms, it would accomplish… something.
I have to tell you, and I say this with absolutely no sense of pride, this approach reminded me of myself in my clumsy forays into the gym. As such, I am all too aware of the fact that it is an approach one takes when one is not particularly skilled at the sport of boxing, and when used against people who are skilled at the sport of boxing, it generally leads to quite a lot of heartache, not to mention headache.
I was reminded last night of another historic mismatch – Floyd/Gatti. It was nearly the same situation. You had your highly overrated fighter with an enormous following due to his reputation for blood and guts and heart, etc., stepping into the ring for a heavily hyped pay-per-view fight with an elite boxing talent and from the opening bell looking like a Golden Gloves novice fighting a professional. It even had a similar subplot of size, being only Floyd’s third fight above 135 with some still doubting whether he could compete against a big junior welter. “He’s never faced a true 140 with power like Thunder Gatti’s,” went the refrain of the Gatti camp at the time.
With his inimitable cadence, Roger Mayweather summed up this category of wishful-thinking mismatch for all time during the Mayweather/Hatton 24-7 when he said, “This right here is just like Sylvester Stallone and Apollo Creed. The reason why he was able to make Rocky one, two, three, four, five, AND fucking six… the only reason he was able to make them kind of movies is because people believe that bullshit. See… this ain’t gonna be that Rocky Seven movie because the real motherfucker’s gonna win for real… the real guy who’s supposed to win is GONNA win.”
Hear hear. Let’s second that for Pacquiao/Hatton. For some reason, even though Floyd took Hatton to school some nineteen months ago and completely exposed him as a glorified club fighter, people signed on for the bullshit again and seemed to believe there was some chance in hell that this time, if he dug REALLY deep, Rocky might beat the best in the sport.
Once again, reality intervened cruelly.
People seem to think that in so aggressively denigrating Hatton’s performance, I am positing the equation as “Hatton sucks, therefore Pacquiao is not that good.” It’s not the case. The equation to me is this – “Hatton sucks, therefore Pacquiao didn’t elevate himself much in my estimation by dramatically knocking him out, even though it was quite a sight to see.” I knew going into this fight that Pacquiao was among the nine or ten truly elite boxers in the world and well worthy of his claim as the pound-for-pound best. I was all but certain that he would defeat Hatton, about as certain as I can be going into a fight (felt the exact same way going into Floyd/Hatton), and the only thing that surprised me was how easy it was for him. Most have ascribed this ease to Pacquiao’s supernatural prowess, and that’s deserved to some extent, but to my observation a large portion of the ease should be chalked up to his opponent’s incompetence.
Maybe, maybe, we learned something about Manny’s punching power at a higher weight in this thing, but on that score I again have to refer to Floyd/Hatton. No, Floyd didn’t knock Hatton out in the second after pummeling him the way Pacquiao did, but he did knock him out spectacularly with a single punch that, while not quite the titanic blow that Pacquiao landed, nevertheless was a stunning one-punch display that (our memories are so short) created a similarly massive buzz in the media. And even though Floyd has proven himself as a legitimate welterweight, he NEVER knocks anybody out at ANY weight. Generally, if he stops someone, it’s Gatti-style, an accumulation of punishment that reduces his man to pieces.
So the equation there is – “Floyd knocked Hatton out, and Floyd is known to have zero power at 47 (or 40, or 35…).” So why is it that we’ve now decided that Pacquiao’s knockout of Hatton means that he has power at this weight? Hatton got knocked out by Floyd and Manny not because of their pop but because of their speed. He’s so terrible with his feet and so open when he throws his shots that, against guys with this kind of blazing handspeed, he never sees the punches coming. Combine that with those bar-brawling, face-forward lunges, and it’s Sleepchester City for our Ricky.
I hate to keep hammering this dead horse in the nutsack, but I feel like it’s an important point because it gets to one of my central pet peeves about the way that people discuss boxing. I love Rocky as much as the next guy (probably more than the next guy, actually, given my Philly-osity), but the Rocky mythology, when transferred to the real world, does the sport a disservice. This game is no more a contest of guts and heart and balls than is basketball or Olympic table tennis. In other words, guts and heart and balls matter greatly, but only, ONLY, if you have the talent and the skill-set to compete at the highest level. Otherwise, it’s just you with all your guts and heart standing there like a retard while all those crazyass Chinese motherfuckers rocket ping-pong balls past your face at like a thousand miles an hour.
Boxing is a strange hustle, because there’s no league, no way for these guys to fight each other in some revolving Round Robin way that provides us with an iron-clad hierarchy of who is great and who is merely average. Imagine if tennis were the same way. There’s this English tennis player from Manchester who makes a name for himself by winning his local club title in thrilling fashion and then goes on to win the WBC tennis belt by upsetting an over-the-hill and poorly trained Tim Henman after Henman retires in the fifth set due to exhaustion. Blimey, they think, this is a truly GREAT tennis player we’ve got here, and with the groundswell of his mass appeal, he leaps to the top of the sport. He gets a match with Roger Federer at the MGM Grand in Vegas and all his supporters show up in their ridiculous outfits with their tubas and shit and… Federer blows their boy off the court.
But they love this chap, right, so they take two years to forget about the Federer business (two years in which their hero squeaks by some marginal opponents playing so-so tennis at best, a fact they choose to ignore) and then they get him a match against Rafael Nadal. This time it will be different, they think. Before he was trained by the pro at his club. Now he’s trained by Richard Williams, innit? So it’s on with the get-ups and the tubas and… BLOODY BLEEDIN ‘ELL!!! AGAIN? This time their man doesn’t even finish the match. He charges the net like a maniac on every point and rather than bother rallying with him every single time Nadal just plows him right in the face with the ball. It’s the first tennis match in history to be stopped on cuts.
Obviously, tennis doesn’t work that way. But boxing does. It’s one of the most difficult things about following the sport, the most frustrating, and at the same time, the most fun, because it opens itself to endless conjecture. But it also leads to situations like Pacquiao/Hatton and Floyd/Gatti. Only in boxing does winning the college World Series earn you a chance to play the Yankees at Yankee Stadium if you have enough of a fan-base to fill the stadium. And after the Yankees destroy that college team, only in boxing are people inclined to think, “wow, these Yankees are one of the greatest teams in the history of baseball… after all they just beat the bejabbers out of the college world champions.”
They only do this, by the way, if they are inclined to love the Yankees in the first place. When Floyd humiliated Gatti, I recall, all anyone wanted to talk about after the fight was what a mismatch it was and how Gatti didn’t even belong in the ring that night. Pacquiao humiliates Hatton, however, and suddenly people are saying that he may be the greatest fighter who ever lived.
It’s hard out there for a pimp.
Part II. It’s Hard Out There for a Pimp
What Pacquiao had himself against Hatton was an easy fight that many people mistakenly believed might be hard. What Chad Dawson had last night was the exact opposite.
I count myself among the many who mistakenly thought Antonio Tarver would be much easier pickins for Chad last night than he turned out to be, and I tip my hat to Tarver on that one. He ain’t going out like that, and good on him for it. I thought this was nothing more than a check-cashing opportunity for Tarver Inc., but he showed up in great shape and he brought the fight to the final bell.
On Friday, I wrote about how disappointed I was with Dawson in the first Tarver fight, how I thought that he might have gotten a stoppage in that thing if he’d forced the issue instead of coasting to an easy decision. In the rematch, it was my opinion that, given the Pacquiao/Hatton lead-in getting him a more sizable audience than the event deserved, he needed to break the bank trying to bankrupt Tony the Tarver in thrilling fashion if he wanted to jump on the caboose of Manny’s Soul Train to Star Town.
It didn’t happen, but this time it wasn’t for want of Dawson’s effort. Particularly in the middle rounds, he stood toe-to-toe with Tarver and slugged it out, and in the process he both landed and ate some very big shots. Granted, Dawson is not known to be a huge puncher, but I am nevertheless impressed today with Tarver’s chin, because he absorbed a number of brain-rattling uppercuts last night and never seemed even remotely buzzed. Likewise Dawson, whose chin has been doubtful in the past, walked through some doozies and kept on coming.
Surprisingly, given that HBO recently has made a sizable investment in Dawson, both Jim Lampley and Max Kellerman seemed eager to dismiss him as B-plus material last night. They did so on the exact line that I was taking beforehand – the first Tarver fight was lackluster, and if Dawson can’t do something spectacular in the second fight, then maybe he simply isn’t the star-in-the-making that we want him to be.
Only Manny Steward pointed out what seemed to me to be the crucial X-factor that sullied that equation – this was not the same Antonio Tarver. Dawson admitted as much in the post-fight interview. Not a wordsmith by any means, he said, “I was out of my element,” as he praised Tarver’s effort. I think all he meant was, “man, I aired it all out in there and the man kept coming – this was a tough motherfucking fight.”
Tarver at his best (or close to his best) and trying his hardest is not a guy who’s going to make you look great in there no matter how convincingly you beat him, which is a shame for Dawson, because last night would have been a great time for him to look seriously great.
But them’s the vagaries of the game. Matchmaking is everything. You look great against the guys who are tailor-made to make you look great, and the guys who aren’t, who know their craft and push you to the wall… those guys you just gotta grind it out with and live to fight another day. Would that there was a Ricky Hatton at 175 that Dawson could ride to the big-time in his next fight, but sadly, no such paper tiger lurks in his jungle. Instead there’s an actual fucking tiger, goes by the name of Glen Johnson. Allow me to reiterate my point about the pimping and the hardness and the whatnot…
May 10th, 2009 at 8:42 pm
Ok Large, but I still don’t get why Dawson impressed you more than Paq. Sure, Tarver came into the 2nd fight an arguably better fighter than he was in the first, but he was still fighting a 40 year old who seemed slow, and save several hits in the middle rounds, didn’t do all that much damage to Dawson.
Sure, Tarver is a wily veteran who is tough to look good against, but if anyone is supposed to overcome those adversities, its someone like Dawson. If you’re in that division, and you beat Glen Johnson in a debatable decision, and then UD Tarver 2 times, what are you bringing to the table now? Why should I care or follow this guy? He epitomizes the talented-enough, but not exciting fighter.
I might be outing myself as a younger generation of fight fan (I’m 36) who can’t appreciate a ring technician, but I don’t think Dawson even brings that to the table. He seems a kid with great physical skills and a good beard who won’t surprise you or knock you out, and you need to work damn hard to win a round off him. Sounds like a fighter suited to win Olympic-scoring bouts. Sorry, I’ll pass. I’d love to see BHop and Dawson fight now, and methinks BHop will eat him for lunch.
May 10th, 2009 at 9:20 pm
listen, if money dismantles JMM, then what if he fights paqman?
same shit?
does this rocky theory apply to Haye?
May 10th, 2009 at 10:52 pm
Kop – just in the same way that I’m more impressed when Davydenko beats Safin in a tough five setter than I am when Nadal bagels the #89 seed in the world. I thought Tarver looked like he was all there last night – just like you I was rooting for him late, and I have never liked him
May 11th, 2009 at 12:00 am
thoroughly enjoyed watching the hbo broadcast for the first time….and i really feel like floyd is going to beat JMM, at the least, easily
May 11th, 2009 at 1:04 am
I like the Pacquiao/Hatton-Floyd/Gatti comparison.
I’ve been noticing that also – that Mayweather tends to school his opponents while Pacquiao demolishes them like a wrecking ball.
What makes a potential Mayweather-Pacquiao matchup so intriguing is the fact that the way they beat their opponents doesn’t say anything about how they will beat up on each other when they’re put into the ring.
All the debate until now is academic – and a matter of preference. Get the two together in the ring and we’ll see what happens.
P.S. I think Mayweather will school Marquez.
May 11th, 2009 at 6:30 am
The irony of Roger Mayweather’s Rocky quote is the fact that he is the one that said Hatton “should” beat Pacquiao because Pacquiao is too small. Apparantly Roger likes “bullshit” just like the rest of us.
I think the reason Manny had Hatton down so quickly is not because he possesses Tommy Hearns or George Foreman like power, but rather it is his speed and accuracy. Or to put it another way his “talent and skill set”. Hatton never saw the right hooks that caught him. That disorients a fighter when he’s getting caught with shots he doesn’t see. Oscar had the same problem with Manny. Guys at lighter weights were quicker and Manny’s speed wasn’t that great to them. Boxing is about timing, footwork, movement and accuracy. Manny is peaking in all these categories. Floyd is extremely good but I can’t help but wonder if he hasn’t been slipping a bit. I think the long lay-off will hurt him even more. Long lay-offs hurt guys like him(timing and accuracy guys) more than power punchers. Think about it his last 4 fights: 12 round decision against Judah, 12 rounds with Baldomir, splits with Oscar , and goes 10 with Hatton. Let’s just say it’s been a long time, if ever at all, since Floyd has seen a fighter with the skill set of Pacquiao.
May 11th, 2009 at 8:28 am
The thing that stood out the most in both the De La Hoya and Hatton fights to me was how quickly Manny finds his punching range. The first round in a Pacquiao fight looks like round 3 or 4, to most other fighters. I know Large is about to say that it’s because Oscar was dried out and weak and Hatton has a concrete block for a head that doesn’t move….but still this guy is peaking. I watched the first couple rounds of Hatton-Mayweather last night and Hatton fought those rounds with just as much “frenetic abandon” as with Pacquiao. The difference is it took Floyd a bit longer to get is timing and range set against the clumsy Brit. Call me crazy, but I think Floyd will have a much more difficult time against a quick, accurate fighter like Pacquiao that moves effectively, than he would agaist a guy like Miguel Cotto( who he’s avoided), who like Hatton is easy to hit and never seems to feints opponents.
May 11th, 2009 at 12:40 pm
One quibble on the “knocking out Hatton doesn’t prove power” point:
Floyd’s check hook knockdown (in a fight that ended by TKO, not KO) is not in the same galaxy in terms of a power as the lefthand thermonuclear bomb Manny detonated on Fatton’s chin. One put Ricky down. The other put him out for minutes.
May 11th, 2009 at 12:58 pm
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J_4IfSckVsw
What Pacquiao did to Hatton is very similar to what Sugar Ray Leonard did to another British fighter named Davey Green back in 1980. Like Hatton, Green was a flawed but good fighter. He beat talented welterweights like Andy Price, John Stracey and Jimmy Heair and lost to a very good Carlos Palomino….but no one made him look as bad as Sugar. Watch him fight in this video and you’d think he’s a club fighter. He wasn’t. He was good. Just not when he was in the ring with Sugar Ray. Hatton is flawed, but still a good fighter. You don’t beat guys like Tszyu, Collazo,Urango, Lazcano, etc if you’re a club fighter….again, much like old Davey Boy Green, Ricky is a good fighter, just not when he’s in the ring with Manny.
May 11th, 2009 at 4:13 pm
As a Hatton fan, I tend to agree with Brad. He had a four year run as Ring Champ at 140, club fighters don’t do that.
As for Dawson, I wasn’t that impressed. I think he is being overhyped because of Money’s comment about him, which may or may not be fair. Although I thought he clearly won, I thought the scoring was a little wide. His performance was good but it would not have been good enough to beat Glen Johnson. I’m sort of hoping Hopkins keeps his word so that Johnson gets the rematch.
May 11th, 2009 at 8:29 pm
speaking of guys hatton beat…it’s a few weeks out, but i like urango by KO over berto. and the more i think about it, i see JMM/floyd as a near toss-up. i just don’t see floyd returning after that long and having an easy time with marquez. plus, floyd has rarely shown any desire to really put the pedal to the medal and dispatch of opponents. just like RJJ in his prime, he has almost always been able to beat guys on cruise control. at some point, that shit is bound to malfunction. and while i think he has all the tools to beat JMM, i just don’t see him doing it with ease. did we ever get solid numbers on the pacquiao/hatton ppv?
May 11th, 2009 at 8:48 pm
I am surprised that nobody has made a big deal over how Floyd coming back after that long of a layoff and jumping in right away with JMM is an extremely dangerous fight. JMM after round 1 of the first fight against Pacquiao was the better fighter. Many believe that JMM could have won both of those fights and it seems that Pacman was looking to fight anyone but JMM a third time. Before this fight I had a discussion with a friend when JMM called out Mayweather after the Diaz fight that this fight would never happen because it is such a high risk with little reward for Floyd to ever consider taking this fight. In the past many believe Floyd has been very selective in choosing the right/safest opponent and some have accused him of ducking tough fights such as cotto, margarito, and paul williams. Although JMM is highly regarded in the boxing world, to the mainstream media he is not a big name money draw. However he is more dangerous in my opinion than many remember. I know he is a smaller guy but Floyd is also a little guy that has climbed up in weight classes and is about the same size in height as JMM so that shouldn’t be as much of an issue as you might think. Besides the two fights with Pacquiao if anyone thinks this is going to be a walk in the park tune up fight for Mayweather, do yourself a favor and watch the Juan Diaz fight from earlier this year again.
May 12th, 2009 at 5:29 am
Do we have numbers on the fight yet? Or know who won that bet? I’m liking my 1.25 right now.
May 12th, 2009 at 10:27 am
say what u want about pacs power…it took about 200 shots to put david diaz down…he landed about 200 on oscar and didnt put him down(and oscar wanted to go down)…ricky was also had his ass saved as he was hurt by friggin juan lazcano
May 12th, 2009 at 10:37 am
Ricky a few weeks ago you were talking about possibly putting a bit of cash down on Hatton because you liked the odds. Please tell me you resisted that temptation.
May 12th, 2009 at 10:49 am
the money went down…and although it did go back up a bit…i did resist the tempation and bet the pac line…although i did throw 10 bucks on a few rounds for ricky for the hell of it
May 12th, 2009 at 11:04 am
A dollar won in a bet brings more satisfaction to us than the 99 which we had to work for….I think Mark Twain said that or something close…. anyways, do you see Mayweather and Pacquiao fighting before the year is out? I don’t see the logic of any other match up. People who aren’t even very interested in boxing are talking about it. It has to happen.
May 12th, 2009 at 11:19 am
another quote that i like to live by, from legendary boston mc edo.g, goes something like “money won is twice as sweet as money earned and monkey kept is twice as sweet as money burned”….pretty funny…i was killing the sportsbook and tables at the mgm and ny, ny from friday till early sunday morning…killing baseball run lines…nba playoff games….and making a few dollars on the blackjack tables….but an 11am checkout time and a 10pm flight=bad news….pretty much squandered all of my winnings monday afternoon playing 50-100 dollar hands of blackjack all afternoon….oh well
brad…i certainly hope we see floyd/pac…but you never know with floyd…i think he and his team will work hard for their fight with marquez…see how that goes…and break down pacman…and see if they want any part of him
i really feel like floyd is going to take marquez apart pretty easily…which would probably naturally lead one to believe that hed wanna tangle with pac….but then again…if he can get a big money fight with say, shane, and UD him the way he did oscar…then floyd can say he beat a legit welter…and thats that….as opposed to getting into a possible firefight with pac
that being said…i cant really think of anyone that floyd could reasonably face…that i would favor over floyd…i dunno what it is…i just get the sense that floyd truely is great and at some point he is going to shut most of the detractors up…i love JMM…but i get a sense that(and i could be horribly wrong)that floyd is going to make it look easy…i wonder what his haters will say after that?
May 12th, 2009 at 11:59 am
My problems with Floyd have nothing to do with what he does between the ropes. He’s always interesting to watch. He’s just too smart. There is no burning passion to prove he’s the best. He knows he is, so he’ll wait til a great offer comes along or an agreeable match-up then fight. The sad part is he’s not ever going to get these years he “takes off” back and fans will never see how great he could have been. This past year we should have seen Floyd in Superfights with Cotto or Mosley. Pacquiao now has boxing fans interest, not Floyd. Pacquiao does seem to have a burning desire to prove his greatness in the ring. He also appears to be in a Michael Jordan, Tiger Woods like ‘zone’ of sorts…did you see Manny walking into the ring against Hatton with that shit-eating grin on his face? I don’t think I ever seen someone look so happy to fight.
By the way, the Tyson film is great. I saw it yesterday.
May 12th, 2009 at 12:18 pm
i totally understand brad…the thing is…and i look at someone like shane mosley….the more you move up in weight the more money there is in it…so its natural for these guys to want to move up….remember when floyd fought chico…he was unbeated(chico)and if i recall a slight favorite…and floyd tore him apart….what lightweight in their right mind would have wanted to face a prime lightweight shane mosley? absolute beast….its not always easy to move up in weight and be totally effective and carry yer style and power….and thats why i think floyd is so careful…i mean…yeah you can say “well if u say yer the best then u gotta prove it”….but would u really expect floyd to jump in there at 147 against paul williams?? i wouldnt….i highly doubt hes afraid of cotto….but that whole thing is welllll…i mean yer hearing arum wants to do cotto/pac so it unclear
manny is definitley in the zone right now…and i dont want to do it…i dont wanna try and take away from what hes been doing…and what hes been doing for this great sport….but if floyd takes JMM in the type of fashion i think he might…it will certainly be interesting to hear people analyze the floyd/pac matchup….
May 12th, 2009 at 12:19 pm
lol@”unbeated”…sorry
May 13th, 2009 at 12:14 pm
large…ive just watched this for the 3rd time…2nd time on hbo broadcast…and first time completely sober….
ill say this…im not quite sure what to make of the 2nd round…when the fight ended i said it…and after the fight talking to fans i said it…”looked like ricky was starting to settle in a little…thought maybe he would survive a few more rounds”…..im still not completely sure what to make of it….did ricky completely let his guard down and get caught after hearing the 10 second warning…thinking he would easily survive the rest of the round…..or did manny set him up perfectly with the short jab followed by the left….it appeared manny tried to time that same shot off the short jab at least twice in the round earlier…and just missed…..any of you guys have an opinion on that? im still wondering if ricky got lazy or finally timed perfectly…or maybe both
May 13th, 2009 at 2:17 pm
Thanks for bringing that up, Ricky. I noticed the same thing in the replay, that he tried that same roundhouse left a couple of times earlier off the jab, once in particular I remember gave me the feeling of, “there it was, that’s where he saw the opening that would tell the tale.”
I actually thought Hatton fared better in the second when I was watching it live than I did watching the replay. Live, I thought he was actually starting to get off in there and come out ahead in a few exchanged, but in the replay it looked to me like he was getting nothing but the worst of it the whole way through.
Don’t think he got lazy though. He is a frenetic little bastard, Ricky, and even with speed like Manny’s, you’re not going to hit the guy just perfectly as he’s diving in every time. ALMOST every time, though. Man, the combination of Manny’s speed and Ricky’s lunges made for some fucking fireworks, no doubt. I almost enjoyed the first knockdown more than the killing blow, just cause Hatton looked so bad on it. It was basically the southpaw’s version of the Floyd punch too.
By the way – me on the question of where are the Pac/Hatton PPV numbers – http://www.sportingnews.com/blog/firstcuts/entry/view/24140/where_are_the_pacquiaohatton_ppv_numbers?
May 13th, 2009 at 2:18 pm
And oh yeah, Ricky, sorry we didn’t cross paths in Vegas. I called you – I think you called me back. I was pretty shot after the fight, honestly, although I probably could have been persuaded to hang. I’m almost glad we didn’t hook up though – sounds like I might have had to lend you money to win some of your money back.
May 13th, 2009 at 11:19 pm
yeah large…saturday was my birthday…so i was up at about 6am…started drinking around 10am….by the time the fight was over i was pretty tired myself…went and had a few drinks at Rouge after…then retired pretty early myself while the rest of the people i was with went out….got up and went twice as hard sunday though
and actally large…i was up pretty good through the weekend…about 1800…it was on monday waiting for my 10pm flight that i lost it playing blackjack…still broke even though
im sure well get a chance to meet up out there again sometime in the near future…hell..id go out for jmm/floyd if i could find some of my peoples to join me…not likely…but i wont miss pac/floyd…