THE CONFLUENCE OF STORMS IS FINALLY HERE
By Ed de la Vega, DDS
PhilBoxing.com
Wed, 22 Feb 2012
Top Rank?s Bob Arum may or may not have had intentions to put together the ?battle of the century? featuring Filipino spitfire Manny Pacquiao and the loudmouth from Grand Rapids, Floyd Mayweather Jr.
Therefore outright blame is placed on the grand old man from Las Vegas or even Manny Pacquiao for the non-fight. But if one takes a closer look, it appears that Mayweather has some blame on his shoulders too.
Truth is no one knows for sure and it does not really matter now.
Given that, it is refreshing that Pacquiao and Mayweather will still fight this summer.
Mayweather takes on a former Pacquiao knock-out victim, Miguel Cotto of Puerto Rico on May 5th at the MGM Grand.
Pacquiao for his part will take on a young undefeated fighter from Palm Springs, CA, Timothy Bradley ? the reigning WBC and WBO light welterweight world champion.
Bradley is going up one weight-class to challenge Pacquiao for his WBO Welterweight Title.
It took some maneuvering for Bradley to be picked. In fact, he is just one of those that were initially mentioned when the fight with Mayweather started getting to be impossible to set.
Bradley fancies himself to be the ?Desert Storm?. Pacquiao on the other hand has been dubbed with many names. One pundit called him the ?Pacific Storm?.
Thus the fight at the MGM on June 9th will be the ?Confluence of the Storms?.
The coming together of Pacquiao and Bradley was however only on paper until the two finally signed the contracts and the press conferences set to officially declare that the fight is on.
Today that is exactly what happened.
After Bradley and Pacquiao signed the contracts at two different times, Top Rank set the presscons.
The first one just concluded at the famed Beverly Hills Hotel at high noon today..Another one is set at New York on Thursday.
Top Rank seems to favor the Beverly Hills Hotel for Pacquiao fight presscons.
Nothing wrong with that!
The place is swanky and easily accessible. Parking is free and the food is great.
But above all, the event is for the press corps only. The public was graciously excluded. That makes it easy for the corps to get their jobs done without having to contend with the frenzy atmosphere if the fans were around.
As usual the event was full of the ?who-is-who? in the LA Press corps. There were also members of the international press as well- a true testament that indeed Pacquiao is now a legit cross-over star.
One thing that stood out about the event was the respect that Pacquiao and Bradley had for each other. Both were focused on the fight and there was no trash-talk.
One could only imagine if Mayweather was there instead of Bradley.
?There will be a whole lot of expletives,? one pundit said. ?And, the atmosphere would have been a whole lot different,? he added.
Surely such foul language would have not stood too well with the now bible leaning Pacquiao.
But then again with Mayweather ducking Pacquiao, I guess we will never know, huh?
Click here to view a list of other articles written by Ed de la Vega, DDS.
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