Could a bad decision be good for the sport?
I have recently wrote a article venting about the bad decision of the Pacquio vs Bradley fight and stating that boxing has potential of being in trouble because of the less than truthful decisions, but where what does this do for boxing really?
We will always have bad decisions in sports and people will always have personal debates about what they thought of certain games/fights but the sports will always move on because of the nature of these contests.
What makes for a good fight? Good guy vs bad guy, some form of drama, big names, fighting styles, etc. What does a bad decision do for a rematch? It gives it drama, it gives everyone a good guy and a bad guy depending on your opinion of the previous fight, and at this point fighting styles and big names doesn’t matter because they’re over-shadowed by everything else.
When we get fight finishes like the Pacquio vs Bradley fight, where so many people believe the decision was wrong and a rematch potentially being made in the same breath, does this have the potential of helping the sport somehow? We are all, by all I mean the majority, looking at this as a black eye for the sport, which it may be, but what if it helps in the long run? What if the rematch comes and we get a fight of the year type of performance from both fighters and it ends decisively? Boxing fans tend to have short memories so if you can harness their/our frustration of a fight and aim it at another fight and create something bigger, you win in the end and all is somewhat forgiven.
I’m not sure if this will happen, but picture this:
The world is angry about the outcome of the fight. Professional columnists, seasoned veteran writers, promoters (even their promoter), boxers, and an endless amount of fans believe Pacquio won that fight! Compubox even shows that Pacquio landed more punches and landed more accurately than Bradley, so there is a lot leaning towards Pacquio being robbed, so there is a rematch!
Now the rematch comes on November 10th (This date is not finalized, so I’m speaking hypothetically), which has given all the people who said they weren’t ordering the fight due to their boycotting thought process, to calm down and get caught into the excitement of Pacquio being able to redeem himself or prove he won the first fight. You already have the small percentage of people who believe Bradley won because they want to see him do it again and/or just want to watch a good fight. HBO adds the award winning 24/7 show to document the weeks before the fight which will further the anticipation of November 10th.
Fight night comes and the world is watching as the still undefeated Timothy Bradley gets in the ring against the arguably “still” P4P King Manny Pacquio. Why wouldn’t this fight be a war? Why wouldn’t the disappointed Pacquio come in the ring with the intentions of knocking Bradley’s head into the crowd after being robbed of a 7 year winning streak? Why wouldn’t Bradley prepare for this? And Bradley still wants to feel like a true champ, a true warrior, or at least like a fighter that beat Pacquio, because he hasn’t felt any of that after his first win!
The first bell rings and the fight goes the distance in a back and forth battle with the fight ending with both fighters laying it all on the line in the middle of the ring……..the world watches as Michael Buffer begins to crown the winner, and we all hold our breath..
No matter the winner, would it have been a better outcome if Pacquio was crowned the winner after this lackluster fight and they moved on to other fights? Do you get my point? This could virtually lead to a better fight and it returns that anticipation we had leading up to the first fight but with more substance. We know Bradley can stand in there and somewhat trade and good enough to get out the way of some of the devastating blows, so there will be less blogs about Bradley not being able to handle Pacquio’s power or being able to stay on his feet because no matter if he lost, he still did both of those 2 things.
Not sure where this confusing decision will take us but I hope wherever we end up, it’s far from where we are now….which feels like we are somewhere caught in the matrix and we are looking at a black cat that we swear we just seen a second ago!
