In Third Person

Where was I on the day boxing died?

I was with my family, watching Manny Pacquiao out-class Timothy Bradley, only to be rewarded with a controversial loss due to split decision.

Before I go any further with this, kudos to Timothy Bradley for showing a lot of courage and heart in his fight against Pacquiao. He fought to win every step of the way. However, based on what I saw, what my family saw, what the commentators saw, what the crowd saw, and what seemingly everyone else saw, Pacquiao dominated that fight. More landed punches. More power punches landed. Better punching percentage. Whatever metric you want to judge the fight against, Pacquiao was ahead.

Unfortunately, none of the judges saw it as lopsided as everyone else did. Two out of three saw that as a Bradley win.

I understand that when it comes to judging, it’s a matter of personal opinion. Technically, there’s no such thing as a wrong opinion. However, if an opinion could ever be classified as such, I’d throw this one right up there.

Bias aside, the clearly better man got screwed out of a win he rightfully deserved. For a sport already in turmoil from garbage like this, screwing your biggest superstar out of a win he earned does little to save what little goodwill the populous has for the sport.

Boxing will not die because of this, but it may as well be dead to me. I’ve been a fan of the sport for over 20 years. I’m passionate enough about the sport to be writing an angry and off-topic blog post it at 2:30AM. However, it’s hard to be passionate about a sport where  obvious victors get can get screwed out of their victories like this. Not even a rematch is going to fix things, as the damage has been done. Congratulations to Bradley, I guess. And thanks for the memories, Manny. But after tonight’s debauchery of a decision, I have a hard time believing the ‘sport’ will ever win me back.