Big Apple Boxing Thoughts 11.14.09: Fight Night

Posted by Jonathan Yaghoubi on 11.14.2009

A look into tonight's matchup between Manny Pacquiao and Miguel Cotto. Plus, thoughts on Dawson's win over Glen Johnson and Alfredo Angulo's explosive knockout victory.


Photo by Chris Farina / Top Rank

We're only hours away from the epic battle between Manny Pacquiao and Miguel Cotto at the Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas. A boxing fans dream matchup and a fight that the world can't wait to see. The 24/7 for Pacquiao/Cotto has been the best installment of the Emmy award winning series so far and has provided plenty of drama from the Pacquiao camp. However, with or without 24/7, this fight is clearly a home run for the fans and should be more competitive than the Mayweather-Marquez debacle that generated one million pay per view buys.

One of the fact or fiction questions from this week was if the Pacquiao-Cotto fight will do bigger PPV buys than Mayweather-Marquez. All logic points that it should do more buys than the Mayweather fight. While all fight fans love and admire the career's of Cotto and Pacquiao, they are no where the star that Floyd Mayweather is in America. Hate him or love him, Floyd knows how to sell fights and people order his fights no matter who he faces. He has become the new king of PPV boxing.

But, I do feel that Pacquiao is on his way there. Having him on the cover of Time magazine can only help his appeal. You are talking about a magazine that is read by millions of people all over the world. When people read this issue about him fighting for the entire of the Philippines, they might get sucked into Manny and may order the fight because of it. Appearing and singing on Jimmy Kimmel can only help his popularity. The guy has pretty decent singing voice and maybe that could bring in some female fans to follow Manny as well. If Manny can put on a vintage performance and come out with a win, his star appeal will be even bigger that Money Mayweather and a fight with Mayweather will not be far beyond.

I am not here to dismiss Cotto in anyway. While he may not be a bigger star than Pacquiao but he is also the pride of where he comes from. Puerto Rico is not as big as the Philippines, but he is still fighting for an entire island of his people. Puerto Rico is home to one of the most passionate boxing fans than any other place in the world. While the love for Cotto is huge, the Puerto Rican might not be ready to put him on that same level on Felix Trinidad just yet. As unfair as that might sound, it's certainly on the mind of the many Puerto Rican fight fans I have had a chance to talk to. Cotto is a warrior who never backs down from any fight. He will fight anyone and is the complete opposite of Mayweather because he takes no easy fights. He proved it by taking a very tough Joshua Clottey back in June and is doing it again by facing the best pound for pound boxer in the world. If Cotto pulls off the upset, he will become the top guy in all of boxing and will certainly be a future hall of famer in my eyes. It should be one hell of a fight and I expect to be a fight of the year candidate.

In other boxing news, Alfredo Angulo has bounced back in a big way from his first career loss. Fighting on the undercard for Dawson-Johnson 2, Angulo showed HBO and the fans that he is still a world class boxer. "Perro" Angulo simply killed Harry Joe Yorgey with a crushing third-round knockout. The knockout was so bad that you could see Yorgey's eyes just pop wide out after the right-left combination that knocked him out cold.

It was as good a showing as you can get from a guy following a loss. Angulo has now won two in a row in bouncing back from his lone loss, a decision to former welterweight titlist Kermit Cintron back in May. Angulo scored a knockdown in the second round and landed 58 of 108 punches and looked the promising fighter HBO had hoped for when they signed him to his TV deal. He will certainly be on the list as one of the top fighters from November.

In the main event, Chad Dawson stayed undefeated with a pretty easy unanimous decision over Glen Johnson. It was a far easier fight for Dawson since the last time they fought in 2008. Dawson won a disputed decision over Johnson in their first fight. He said he took the rematch to see how much if he learned and grew from the first fight.

Dawson used his right jab to score, while keeping Johnson away. He won the early rounds by following each jab with a hard left or a quick combination. Johnson tried real hard to chase down Dawson but Chad was too elusive and looked he was never hurt from any of Johnson's punches.

What can you say about Chad? It was not exactly the most thrilling performance we will see from Chad. I still feel his performance against Adamek was one of the best I have seen in the last five years. But he looked bored and uninterested in this one and very similar to the second Tarver fight. A win is a win and it was clear that Chad was the superior boxer. There is no doubt now that he is the best fighter in the 175-pound class. I have said before that Chad should be the one to replace Jermain Taylor in the world boxing classic. He could beat any of the guys in the tournament and would be the perfect guy to replace Taylor. But we know how boxing works and the idea is pretty much a long shot of happening. Instead, Dawson looks like he will wait for the winner of the Dec. 11 bout between WBC champion Jean Pascal and Adrian Diaconu. Nothing to go crazy about but Dawson is still only 27 years old and has time to get some of those bigger fights. A fight I would love to see is Dawson-Calzaghe. If Bad Chad wants more popularity and recognition, he needs to call Joe out of retirement before it gets too late.

News on Pavlik

Kelly Pavlik will return to the ring to fight on December 19th against Miguel Espino. The fight will take place in his hometown of Youngstown, Ohio, at the Beeghly Center on the campus of Youngstown State University. Pavlik (35-1, 31 KOs), who has been earning seven-figures for recent fights, will take a major pay cut, down to about $500,000, to face Espino.

Does this make any sense to anyone? He could not fight Williams on the 5th with his hand being messed up from the staph infection but he is good to go two weeks later? I think it's the craziest and thing I ever heard. Williams vs. Pavlik would have been a great fight for the fans and one that many people wanted to see. While Williams is facing a tough Sergio Martinez, Pavlik is stuck fighting a nobody on a college campus. Is it me or does anyone else feel that Kelly needs to get the hell out of Youngstown and train somewhere else not called Youngstown. Just another weird situation for the sport of boxing that you really can't explain to the average Joe. The only thing you can say " It's boxing, did you expect anything else?"