YOU feel cheated like all honest, self-respecting Pinoys?
You’ve got one great sympathizer from the most unlikely place.
Listen to this: “I feel like Pacquiao won the fight but I am not going to sugarcoat nothing. The last fight belonged to Marquez, this one belonged to Pacquiao. I am calling it like it is.”
That’s not from Barack Obama or Oscar De La Hoya.
That was Floyd Mayweather Jr. speaking from jail, as quoted by Sports Illustrated.com.
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In the same posting carried by philboxing.com yesterday, it was reported that an Irish betting site was refunding Pacquiao bettors in what’s called a “justice payout.”
Paddy Power, Ireland’s largest telephone service, issued this statement on its blog Sunday:
“It was a result that stunned the world, even by modern professional boxing standards. Last night in Las Vegas the brilliant Filipino Manny Pacquiao lost his WBO welterweight belt to Timothy Bradley in a controversial split decision defeat. With that Paddy Power has rolled out one of the famous Justice Payouts.”
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Meanwhile, Pacquiao promoter Bob Arum was quoted by 8CN Exclusive as saying he would request the Attorney General to look into what has been called boxing’s biggest robbery.
Arum said he did not want to go to the Nevada State Commission.
Reason: “The Nevada Commission is of an arrogance that cannot be penetrated,” Arum explained.
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Earlier, Arum bore down hard on the judges who worked the controversial world welterweight championship in Las Vegas.
The officials were branded as the “three blind mice.”
Arum also said that two of the judges, both male, have long been overdue for retirement, having been there already when he first showed up for a fight.
However, it would also become clear that age alone cannot be a ready deterrent to sharp, honest judging in professional boxing.
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In fact, the venerable Harold Lederman of HBO, who could be a few years older than Arum, saw Pacquiao a 119-110 winner over Tim Bradley.
At the same time, other respected media entities at ringside at the MGM Grand, like the Associated Press and Reuters, all gave it to Pacquiao by convenient margins.
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In fairness to Bradley, he did show vast improvement since the last time, when he had to grope and plod against a so-so opponent.
But he failed to do enough to win.
Bradley did more than enough to survive.
In fact, he had introduced hideous contortions in successfully avoiding big punches, short of landing on the floor or kissing Pacquiao’s behind.
It could either be sheer frustration or imminent tiredness which had caused Pacquiao to slow down in the homestretch.
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Maybe Pacquiao felt he had already built a convenient lead.
He kept his guard up, but left the door open to suspicious scoring.
Pacquiao failed to nail Bradley down.
But the wonder of it all was how the judges obviously scored all Pacquiao misses as scoring points for Bradley.
It was both mysterious and insane.
The CompuBox showed Pacquiao landed nearly 100 punches more than the new WBO welterweight champion.