I love Floyd and I love the Pac Man. These are 2 baddest, coolest fighters I have ever seen, and I have seen many. I remember Ali, Frasier, Foreman, Hagler, Leonard, Hearns, John the Beast Mugabe, Pryor, Agueyo. I remember Hands of Stone Duran. Tyson, Lewis, Arturo. I remember Roy Jones, Pernell Whitaker, to name but a handful. I remember them all. Badasses one and all. Many with badassitude to spare. There were pretenders who came along, inordinately hyped but we fight fans understood what was up. Remember Prince Nassim? Remember Popo Freitas? I remember them all. Was a fan of many, didn’t think much of a few!
Then came Floyd. The quality was beyond belief. The only fighter I have ever seen who always only fought only as much as he needed to. The guy chose and decided how he wanted to win fights. He had badassitude to spare. He carried his badassedess in a way few could or can. I loved the guy, love the guy still. Remember when he knocked out the pretender from Man City? Toyed with him for a while, got bored and decided to end the fight. Now remember back to the night he decided to fight. The night he fought Arturo. It was frightening to see. As a guy who loves Arturo, it was sad to see.
Then came Manny. The Pac Man. For the longest time he fought primarily with the quickest right-left combination ever and a crazy abundance of energy and determination – he came to fight. Then he found Freddie Roach and learned how to box and the combination became lethal. Remember the abuse he heaped on Oscar? The way he dismissed the pretender from Man City? How he embarrassed Cotto? But he was and is a nice soft-spoken dude, almost embarrassed by how badass he was. He showed a tone of badassitude.
Both guys walked through opponents like knives through butter. In their different ways, one brash, confident, often loud, and the other soft spoken and humble, they were both off the charts on the badassitude scale. The were venom to an opponent. Think of them as twin venomous serpents from a different mother. It came to pass that the only fight we really wanted to see and really want to see is the fight between Floyd and the Pac Man. We all thought we would see this fight like now. Then what happens? We get 2 competing fights with semi no-names because the principals (methinks it’s more the punks who represent the principals) got into a silly pissing contest about who was may or might or was rumored to have used PEDs.
Prior to this silliness you couldn’t find 2 fighters with more badassitude. These boys were badasses and they knew it. It showed in everything they did. It showed in every way they carried themselves. It showed in their fights. It showed. It just showed. They had badassitude to spare. You could run a charity badassitude enterprise on their left overs. Then, poof, just like that, they both punked out at the same time pretty much. They gave in to the pettiness (hint – pettiness drops your score on the badassitude scale), silliness (hint – silliness drops your score on the badassitude scale), stupidity (hint – stupidity drops your score on the badassitude scale – by a lot), bullshit (hint – bullshit drops your score on the badassitude scale), lying (hint – lying drops your score on the badassitude scale – below the floor).
We are watching the 2 best fighters on earth today contrive to sabotage potentially the biggest fight ever on earth and it boggles the mind. Completely boggles the mind!