Last night in Dallas, Texas the third largest crowd in the history of boxing showed up at the new Dallas Cowboys Stadium. What they saw was supposed to be the biggest fight so far in 2010. What they got was one of the worst pay per view cards in a long time and a main event that was a horrible letdown.
Manny Pacquiao dominated Joshua Clottey for twelve rounds in what was one of the easiest victories in Manny's great career. Clottey just showed up for a paycheck and basically took 8 of the 12 rounds off. Many of the rounds Clottey was in single digits as far as punches thrown. Manny on the other hand, threw over one hundred punches in a lot of the rounds and showed the monster crowd why he is one of the popular figures in the world of sports.
Every round was the same. Pacquiao push the pressure on Clottey, landed some good shots to both the body and head while Clottey covered up and did nothing. On the few occasions where Clottey threw punches, he landed some thru the defense of Pacquiao and could have gotten into the fight. In what was easily the biggest fight of his career, Joshua Clottey decided to take the night off after dancing his way to the ring. What a letdown.
On a recent interview on HDNet's "Inside MMA" Freddie Roach was asked which sport was in better shape, mixed martial arts or boxing. Roach's reply was mixed martial arts. He said you have your very talented top of the line fighters in boxing that people love and are great for the sport. He then went on to say that the boxing undercards are crap. You have the main event and just about nothing other than that. That's exactly what we saw last night. Again. It happens over and over in boxing.
Anytime you have Manny Pacquiao on a card, people are coming to come to the fight and buy it on pay per view. There comes a time when the fans deserve to see some other meaningful fights on an undercard. It's always nice to see some up and coming prospects but mix in another title fight once in awhile. The promoters in boxing are the biggest problem in the sport, and we saw that again last night. The megafight between Pacquiao and Floyd Mayweather Jr. wasn't made so we had to settle for what ended up being a terrible card.