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Two rumors swept the internet over the long weekend about Manny Pacquiao:
1. That if the Cotto fight hadn't worked out, he might have fought Wild Card stablemate Amir Khan.
2.
That if he had ended up fighting Khan, he might have had his hands
full, because Khan was whuppin' his ass around the ring back when they
sparred before the Pac/Hatton fight.
I confess that my response to both of these rumors is my most wincing, disbelieving… "ninja PUHLEEZE!"
Recently
in a comment right here at The Rumble, I made the case that Khan likely
would beat Ricky Hatton at 140 pounds right now, and I stand by that
assessment. But I don't think there is
any commutative property to be gleaned from that statement - i.e.
Pacquiao beat Hatton, Khan would beat Hatton, therefore Pacquiao/Khan is a good fight.
That's about as viable to me as, say, this equation -
Michael Spinks beat Larry Holmes, Mike Tyson beat Larry Holmes, therefore Spinks/Tyson is a good fight.Bob
Arum has said that Khan's team was offered a fall fight with Pacquiao
before the Cotto deal was finalized, and they rejected the offer
because they thought it was too soon for Khan. Good for them, I say,
and though I can't believe that Bob Arum
really envisioned a Pac Man/Khan fight happening this year (or
ever), it wouldn't surprise me to learn that he actually had floated an offer to Khan's team just to keep Cotto on his toes.
This
report, however, that Khan was handling Pacquiao in sparring sessions
seems to me like a block of Swiss with a lot of holes. In this report
from
boxingnews24.com,
writer Manuel Perez goes so far as to say that "Pacquiao looked like a
child against Khan and was really getting his backside kicked in a
royal fashion."
Now… though I never saw Pac spar with Khan myself, I was up in his camp for the Hatton fight doing
a piece about 24/7 for the HBO website.
I interviewed a lot of people for that piece, heard a lot of eyewitness
accounts of what had been going down at Pac's camp. Never once did I
hear anyone mention the slightest word about Pacquiao getting bested by
a sparring partner. In fact, I heard the exact opposite, that he'd
looked fantastic in sparring, that no one could touch him.
There's
accompanying video of Pac and Khan sparring at that Boxing News 24 link
above, video that Perez cites as evidence for his case. If you watch
it, I think you'll draw the same conclusion that I did - that Pac, as
fighters often do, was primarily working on his defense at the time.
How often do you see Pacquiao doing the peekaboo? Like… never. He's
playing a little keepaway from Khan, every now and then engaging him,
but for the most part letting Khan get off first, looking for counters
here and there, no doubt practicing for what he imagined would be the
relentless attack of Hatton.
Drawing conclusions from a minute
or so of sparring is never wise. The idea of a Khan/Pacquiao matchup
may swirl around the airwaves for a while, although I can't see it ever
happening. Khan has absolutely no juice here in the States, and even if
Pac could carry him in a Vegas fight as a B-side, I don't see why he'd
want to. There are a slew of other interesting B-sides for him out
there, and most of them bring more to the table than Khan, and what's
more, they're not trained by Freddie Roach.
Nevertheless, let's
just pretend for a second that this fight could happen somewhere down
the road. Given what I've seen of Khan, I'd say he'd be lucky to last
four rounds. And I think I'm being kind to him with that assessment.
Sparring is one thing. But fighting… that's quite another matter
altogether, especially when you're fighting Manny Pacquiao.
This post originally appeared on the Sporting Blog. For more, see The Sporting Blog Archives.
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