The world’s greatest boxer of all time

By Jesus A. Garcia Jr.

I STILL recall the day our boxing icon Manny “Pacman” Pacquiao stopped the Puerto Rican born the flambouyant Miguel Coto for the WBO (World Boxing Organization) welterweight title on November 2009 and one of my friends, my cumpadre and well-known personality here in Dagupan City texted me and ecstatically declared that Pacquiao is the “world’s greatest boxer of all time.” My reply – Pacman could be the world’s greatest boxer this era but he’s not the world’s greatest boxer of all time for some reasons. But my friend would not accept that premise so I had to point out that the professional boxing record of Pacquiao proved that. I asked him “how could you say that he’s the world’s greatest boxer of all time when he was knocked out cold twice during his earlier professional days? Stunned and puzzled, he asked me who were his knockout tormentors. I said Pacman first loss was a devastating third round knockout engineered by his compatriot the unheralded Rustico Torrecampo in February of 1996 in flyweight division. His second debacle was also a third round kayo orchestrated by Thai slugger Medgeon Singsurat on September, 1999 in a world flyweight title fight.

Then Pacquiao also lost to Erik Morales via unanimous decision during their first meeting, but avenged this defeat by knocking out Morales twice during their second and third meetings. Pacquiao drew with Agapito Sanchez and arch-nemesis Juan Manuel Marquez and Pacquiao stopped Sanchez in their second encounter and outpointed Marquez in their second and third clashes. These happened before the Coto fight so how could Pacquiao be the world’s greatest boxer of all time, perhaps not even in this era? He might have convincingly beat Timothy Bradley, Jr. in their second meeting to win back the WBO belt, but he lost the first bout and also suffered a humiliating knockout defeat against Marquez and also lost to pound-for-pound king Floyd Mayweather, Jr. via unanimous decision in his last bout.

The biased American scribes listed nine American boxers (out of ten) and heavyweight Muhammad Ali was their number one pick as the world’s greatest boxer of all time. Second was the great “Brown Bomber” heavyweight Joe Louis and third was welterweight Sugar Ray Robinson and two heavyweights Jack Johnson and Jack Dempsey occupy fourth and fifth position, respectively. Mexican icon Julio Cesar Chavez was the only non-American ring warrior taking up the sixth spot. My hero the Italian-blooded Rocky Marciano (Rocco Francis Marchegiano in real life) was seventh place. The 5’10” former heavyweight world champion Marciano had an unblemished record of 49 wins, no defeat with 43 knockouts beating American world champions all by knockouts like Joe Louis, Joe Walcott, Ezzard Charles, Archie Moore, Jack Dempsey, to name some. He retired undefeated in 1956 and became a boxing referee and commentator for quite some time.

I told my friend that I consider Marciano as the world’s greatest boxer of all time yet I also believe that someday soon Marciano’s record will be broken and will still be hailed the next world’s greatest boxer of all time, but for sure it could not be Pacquiao, not even Ali. My friend didn’t text back.

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QUOTE OF THE WEEK: Better is a little with righteousness, than vast revenues without justice. PROVERBS 16: 8

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