SAN ANTONIO, Texas --- Manny Pacquiao was the first to admit he hardly looked like the world’s best fighter Saturday night.“That was not Manny Pacquiao,” said the 2006 Fighter of the Year, who put his winning performance against surprisingly resilient Mexican Jorge Solis at “about 80 percent.”
Manny might have left his ‘A’ Game on the campaign trail, but when he needed to switch gears he was able to do it. After five rounds in which Manny was no doubt wishing his political opponents had succeeding in having the telecast blacked out back in the Philippines, the circumstances were altered dramatically early in the sixth when a clash of heads opened up a two-and-a-half inch gash along his left eyebrow.
With blood streaming down the side of his face, Pacquiao unleashed a blazing flurry of nonstop punches that didn’t let up over the five or so more minutes the fight lasted, culminating in an eight-round knockout when Solis was able to stand up to it no more.
San Antonio had ostensibly been chosen as the site of Pacquiao’s pay-per-view showcase because of his established popularity here, particularly among the substantial Filipino émigré community, but by the time the main event performers got into the ring you were kind of wondering where Manny’s people were.
We wouldn’t want to be accused of profiling the Alamodome audience, but put it this way: The announced attendance was 14,793, and at least 14,000 of them knew the words to the Mexican National Anthem.
Throw in a couple of upsets by Mexican fighters in the two world title bouts that preceded the main event, and the fact that Solis was still there after five, and it’s fair to say that sentiment was running against Pacquiao. Chants of “Solis! Solis” echoed through the building.
Of course, Pacquiao, by his own admission, had somewhat emboldened his opponent by his failure to figure him out.
“I trained hard for this fight, but he was a difficult guy to prepare for,” said Pacquiao. “And he was moving around so much that it was hard to hit him in the head.”
Indeed, with the fight approaching the halfway mark, Solis had effectively utilized the game plan he had enunciated to us a day earlier.
As the sixth opened, Solis caused Pacquiao to wobble in his tracks when he caught him with a right to the chest, but seconds later the fighters’ heads came together, and Pacquiao was over in a neutral corner, checking for blood, while Vic Drakulic, the Transylvanian referee, kept Solis away.
Freddie Roach, who had flown in from Puerto Rico just hours before to work Pacquiao’s corner, shouted to his charge “Stop fooling around and turn it up.
“Finish him off!” ordered Roach.
Manny appeared to take the message to heart. Abruptly, Solis found himself under siege by punches coming from every direction – lightning combinations, body shots, uppercuts.
“He had very surprising speed,” admitted Solis afterward. He wasn’t quite as strong as I thought he would be, but they were coming so fast I couldn’t see the punches.”
“I was just trying to pressure him,” said Pacquiao. “After the cut, I was trying to make it a fast fight.”
Early in the eighth Solis succumbed to a furious combination of punches, the last of them a right uppercut. He made it to his feet, but Pacquiao dropped him again with a straight left. Solis struggled to make the count, and in truth might have barely done so, but Drakulic waved it off before he became fully erect, and got no argument from anybody, including the loser’s brother, IBF flyweight champ Ulises “Archie” Solis, who was working as the chief second in Jorge’s corner.
Roach praised Solis’ courage, noting that “when you’ve got that ‘0’ on your record, you don’t ever want that first loss.”
In suffering his first defeat, Solis fell to 32-0-1, while Pacquiao returns to the Philippine campaign trail 44-3-2.
After the fight, Pac-Man’s posse commandeered the ring and serenaded what was left of the crowd by chanting “Congressman! Congressman!”
We already know the identity of Pacquiao’s next opponent: Darlene Antonino-Custodio, on May 14. Beyond that a division of opinion seems to be forming up. Arum says he wants Marco Antonio Barrera next for Pacquiao, but the name that came out of Manny’s mouth after the fight was Juan Manuel Marquez’. Stay tuned.
A prescient bettor who liked the underdogs in the two WBC title fights on the card could have turned $10 into $100 with an Edgar Sosa-Cristian Mijares parlay.
Although Mijares was the 115-pound champion, he was a 5-2 underdog in his fight against fellow Mexican Jorge Arce, but it turned out to be the least competitive fight of the night as the prospective law student dominated the veteran from start to finish.
Mijares, who had begun the evening wearing white trunks, finished it in pink, the extra pigmentation coming from a gash across Arce’s forehead that bled copiously for the last third of the fight.
Arce was never really in this one, and admitted as much.
“It was just one of those nights,” he said. “I didn’t have anything. I have no excuses; he was a better man tonight.”
Both fighters weighed in at the divisional limit of 115, but Mijares, who landed 437 punches to Arce’s 132, was taller, stronger, and faster, and never allowed his opponent to get untracked.
“He was a warrior, but he couldn’t keep up with my speed or my jab,” said Mijares, who out-jabbed Arce by a mind-boggling 236-16.
“This was biggest victory of my life,” added Mijares. “It’s a fight I’ve always wanted, and I beat a legend.
The verdict was one-sided on the cards of all three judges – Duane Ford (119-111), Mark Green (118-110) and Tom Kaczmarek (117-111) as well. (Our scorecard agreed with Green’s.)
“I’ll be back,” vowed Arce, whom Arum had been grooming for bigger things. “And I will be a 3-time world champion.”
It must have been a tearful night in Hawaii, where they were already in mourning for Don Ho even before Brian Viloria came up short in his bid to regain the WBC light flyweight title.
Viloria entered the ring to the “Theme from Hawaii 50” and left it with his left eye nearly closed and his right cheek grotesquely swollen after an evening-long onslaught from Edgar Sosa, the rugged new champion from Mexico.
After a decent first round from Viloria, Sosa became the aggressor for most of the night, punishing the former champ with relentless combinations, and while Viloria had his moments, landing the odd right-hand lead and occasionally counterpunching effectively, they were few and far between.
“I thought I did enough to win, but he stepped up in the championship rounds,” said Viloria. “I guess that was the difference in the fight.”
The judges had this one closer than we did: Nevadan Burt Clements had it even at 114-114, while California judge Max De Luca and Texan Jesse Reyes favored Sosa 115-113. The BoxingTalk card favored Sosa by a more substantial 117-111.
Another non-judge, Viloria trainer Joe Goossen, claimed he thought his man had one eight of the twelve rounds. Even allowing for a natural bias for his man, it’s difficult to see how he arrived at that conclusion: CompuBox stats had Sosa throwing 800 punches to Viloria’s 596, and outlanding him 233-155.
“There’s no doubt in my mind I won that fight,” said the new champion, who had gone into the Alamodome a 3-1 underdog. “Viloria is a great champion with a big right hand, but I was able to counterpunch and took control of the fight from the fourth round on.”
In claiming the WBC title in his American debut, Sosa advanced to 27-5. Viloria, winless in his last three fights, fell to 20-2. (His last outing, a draw against Oscar Nino Romero, was subsequently changed to No Contest.)
Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. made short work of an overmatched Anthony Shuler, knocking him out in the second round of their junior middleweight prelim. Early in the second, Chavez (30-0-1), floored Shuler with a left hook followed by a right hand, and while the Indianan made it to his feet after that one, Chavez decked him with a left hook that sent his opponent down so hard that referee Rafael Ramos stopped it without a count at 1:32 of the stanza. Shuler’s record dropped to 20-6-1.
With Tony (Sr.) and Paulie Ayala working his corner, hometowner Joseph Rios went to 2-0 with a fourth-round TKO over Lubbock’s Jeremy Valderaz, who was making his pro debut. In the final minute of the round, Rios, who had been softening up his opponent along the way, landed a jab, a right uppercut, and a hard left to the head on a virtually defenseless Valderaz. Ruben Carrion couldn’t quite get there to stop the last punch, but in one of the more athletic moves you’re ever likely to see from a referee, Carrion stepped between the fighters to rescue Valderaz from Rios, and then, in almost the same motion, with Valderaz on his way down, reached out with his arm and caught him before he could hit the deck. The stoppage came at 2:24 of the round.
Victor Ortiz looked like he might be in for an easy night of it when he dropped Tomas Barrientos twice in the first round (first with a right hook, then with a short left), but shortly after the second commenced, Ortiz found himself on the seat of his pants, courtesy a Barrientos left hook. Before the round was over Ortiz (17-1-1) had Barrientos down again, this time with a left to the body followed by a right to the head.
Barrientos (27-11-1) managed to hang in until late in the fifth, when another right hook sent him ass over teakettle yet again. He was attempting to rise when his corner interrupted Ramos’ count by waving a white towel from the apron, leading the referee to stop the fight at 2:42 of the round.
In an earlier battle of well-matched junior featherweights, Pacquiao’s countryman Bernabe Concepcion (20-1-1) outpointed game Texan Benjamin Flores (14-3) to win the WBC ‘Youth’ title. Judges David Harris and Ray Ovella both had it 97-93, while Rick Crocker scored it 96-94.
The women’s bout on the undercard matched a pair of .500 fighters who, remarkably, remained that way, as San Antonio’s Maribel Zurita (8-8-1) fight to a majority draw in her six-rounder with Houston’s Emily Kelly (2-2-1).
Ramos didn’t do Zurita any favors in the final round, when she had Kelly all but out on her feet with a series of hard punches to the head, only to have the referee step in and pull her away for no apparent reason, a move which allowed Kelly to survive the stanza.
Ovella scored the fight 58-56 for Zurita, but was outweighed by Crocker and Perry Hillin, who both returned 57-57 scorecards.
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