Hindsight and Pacquiao’s hair’s breadth victory

SACRAMENTO, California—A popular sports idiom spawned by American football slams anyone—either an expert or plain spectator—who in hindsight points out where a team went wrong after its big Sunday game has been played.

A person with a fetish for second guessing is it. That someone gets an unwelcome tag— Monday morning quarterback.

QBs-after-the-fact will run rampant after Manny Pacquiao’s hair’s breadth win over Juan Manuel Marquez at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas Saturday night.

Pundits will analyze the slim victory to death. Broadcasters will chatter about it till they’re hoarse. And fans will grapple with sticker shock for their substantial pay-per-view investments on a less than satisfactory bout.

Enough, already. A win is a win. Pacquiao-Marquez 3 is history. Pacman was awarded the victory and that’s that.

When the fog of war lifted, even the combatants and their corners spewed out initial, incendiary reaction but have zipped their lips, for now.

“The fans of Marquez, of course, aren’t happy, but my fans are happy. I clearly won the fight. He is a good fighter, but I do my best. It is very clear that I won the fight,” proclaimed Pacquiao.

“We won with the clearer punches. The audience protested because they saw us win again. I got robbed. It happened again. I don’t know what else I can do in the ring,” sulked Marquez.

“It was a very close fight. It could have gone either way. I asked Manny to move to the right and he didn’t,” noted Pacquiao’s trainer Freddie Roach.

“It was the utmost robbery,” exclaimed Marquez trainer Nacho Beristain, who like his fighter believes they won the first two bouts of the trilogy.

For what it’s worth, Marquez retold a classic movie line—“Fasten your seat belt folks, it’s gonna be a bumpy night”—and proved it.

Saturday night was clearly not the best night for Pacquiao after his impressive conquest of bigger men, the likes of Oscar De La Hoya, Miguel Cotto, Antonio Margarito and Shane Mosley.

He went into the ring, gunning for a knockout against someone his size. But Juan Manuel turned out to be his doppelganger, someone close enough to be his double and more, a counterpuncher waiting for his punches.

Marquez gets to fight Pacman again, should he and Manny invoke a rematch clause that was in their contract.

A fourth bout will be sort of Pacquiao-Marquez 3 plus one, says the Los Angeles Times. That is, if the aging Mexican warrior opts not to retire, as he hinted in a postfight talk with HBO’s Max Kellerman.

After all, with a guaranteed $5 million and a share of the PPV revenue, his bout with the Filipino ring icon was what the Times calls “an instant retirement plan.”

Meanwhile, Floyd Mayweather Jr. must be chomping at the bit to fight Pacquiao now, had he bothered to watch his arch nemesis struggle through 12 rounds against a guy he dominated in 2009. Or maybe not.

With Pacquiao’s pound for pound rein taking a hit after Saturday’s bout, Mayweather must be contemplating on something to make promoter Bob Arum do a triple take.

More money perhaps, should the ghost bout of the century materializes into a real ring appearance.

“Let’s get on it,” Pacquiao challenged Mayweather anyway. “Let’s make the fight happen and give the people a good fight.”

Surprisingly, mum’s the word from a chatterbox like Mayweather.