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The Herd with Colin Cowherd
The W.A.D.E. Concept - Manny Pacquiao vs Mario Barrios For a WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP Is a DISGRACE To Boxing..
00:11:51
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You're listening to an iHeart podcast. All right, so we are back on the way concept presented by the Ring magazine. I'm still in North Carolina. Spoiler alert. I will be going to New York this Thursday for the press conference for Edgar Berlanga versus Hamza Shiraz and Shakur Stevenson versus William Zepeda. Don't miss that one. Live in New York. I'll see you guys there. But today we are talking about the bizarre world that boxing just exists in. Because in a moment's notice, things can happen that revive the sport. Like the Ring magazine coming into boxing and putting on some pretty awesome fights even though the fighters themselves didn't necessarily perform. The matchups were cool. And you're getting to see events that are star studded and have a lot of thought put into matchmaking and X, Y and Z. And then we have, you know, the other side of things, the crossover boxing space and you know, the KSI's and the Jake Paul's and all those things. And they kind of all exist in their own little framework to a degree. And then out of nowhere the WBC decides they want their welterweight champion, Mario Barrios to defend his belt against Manny pacquiao. And about seven to eight, maybe nine, 10 years ago, I would have said hells yeah if we had a Manny Pacquiao championship fight. But Manny's been retired for four years. He's 46 years old. His last fight was in 2021 and he lost to Uges in a unanimous decision. I watched his exhibition bout against the kickboxer guy in Japan. That didn't look good. This is a bad idea, a really bad idea. And again, I think people will look at this and go, well, Jake Paul fought Mike Tyson. And yeah, that happened. And I also said that Mike was going to get really badly hurt and it was a terrible idea for him to do that. And there were some health issues and everything else. Luckily, Mike didn't get super hurt in the fight. But this is a world championship level fight against a sitting world champion and Manny does not belong in there. And again, I'm worried that he's going to get hurt badly for the same reasons. What I mean, the breakdown. Let's go, let's just start here. Manny Pacquiao again. I just went over it. 46 years old, been retired four years, lost his last fight and he beat Keith Thurman before that. But that was 2019, so it's been a while. This is not me discounting who I think is one of the greatest boxers ever and has an argument to be the greatest ever because what did he, he won world championships in how many different divisions? Eight, nine, Something crazy like that. There'll never be anybody like Manny Pacquiao. But, but let's just look at it and throw away your bias or throw away your fandom of Manny Pacquiao because of course there's going to be a ton of people that watch this. And fair play right to those people that want to watch this, they want to see their guy go out and try to give it his all one more time. And Mario Barrios didn't look super spectacular when he was on the Netflix card, the Jake and Mike card, and he got dropped against a guy in Ramos that's, you know, not the best of the best at 147. I mean, we're not talking about Jerome Boots Ennis here, right? Or even amontostanionis. Like we're talking about a guy in Barrios who, you know, when he does step up to the elite of the elite level, does tend to fall in those fights. Keith Thurman, Gervonta Davis, but does have a win over Uges and again is the belt holder right now. The point I'm trying to make is Barrios is not even the elite level of 147, at least not in my opinion. He is not the top level of that weight class. I think everybody knows that right now. But it doesn't need to be for Manny to be in a bad position here because you're talking about a Manny Pacquiao that is not a natural 147 pounder who started his career at 100 and what, six pounds and just continued to dominate as he moved up in weight. His power seemed to carry as he moved up in weight. But that was during prime and you know, toward the latter half of his career. But still a prime Manny Pacquiao whose abilities, much like a Mike Tyson as he got older, start to diminish not just because of his age, but because of his fight style, his explosion, the speed of his hands, the speed of his feet, his ability to fight you with his feet inside and still find a lane for his left hand. And I'm not saying those things can't happen. Listen, Mario Barrios just got dropped in his last fight to Abel Ramos, who's not at the top of the top of the elite level skill in my opinion. So couldn't lightning strike here for Manny Pacquiao and we see a George Foreman esque performance. Maybe, maybe. But when George Foreman won the heavyweight title at 48 years old. He'd also been back for three years. It wasn't like you just walked right back into a title shot after he had come out of retirement. This was George working his way back to a title shot after winning and losing big fights. Manny with the time off, now walking straight back into one. And again, Leo, maybe you can throw some clips up from, from the exhibition that he had in Japan. I just did not like the slowness of the movement, the stuff that you would not want to see. Adam, Manny Pacquiao, because they used to be his greatest strengths, now becoming his greatest weaknesses, right? The kind of plotting footwork, the reaching for punches, not getting to the target like he normally would against a younger fighter, only because he's older and the other guy's younger. And that's what I potentially see happening here. If Mario Barrios can't beat MANNY PACQUIAO At 46, he doesn't deserve to hold the WBC belt. But also, why is that even the. If Mario can't beat him, then he shouldn't hold the belt. If Mario can't beat other actual contenders, he shouldn't hold the belt. Why is Manny Pacquiao the guy brought in to fight for the legitimacy of the WBC at welterweight? It makes no sense. In fact, it delegitimizes the belt. I've always talked about how the four belt system doesn't really make a ton of sense because yes, you give an affordance to people to become world champions, but it doesn't prove who's actually the world champion until someone grabs up all four belts. It's just common sense. Like being a world champion means you are the best in the world. You are the champion of this world at your weight class. We all know right now, at least to me, it's common knowledge that that's Jerome boots Ennis. At 147, he is the best in the world, but he doesn't hold all four belts. So he is only one of the two or three, I guess now world champions doesn't make sense to me. And especially when now you're the WBC and you're like, yeah, let's bring in Manny Pacquiao to potentially win a world championship. And let's say he pulls it off by some miracle. Are we going to put Manny Pacquiao in there with Boots in us? Is that what we're going to do? Of I hope not. And again, this is not me trying to be a hater. It's just I don't want to see Manny get hurt and Barrios you know, not the biggest puncher in the world, but he can hurt him badly. He is a volume puncher and he will be in there against a guy that again, isn't a natural 147. Even if he finished his career at 147, that's not where Manny was his best self. He's definitely going to be at a massive size disadvantage here. Height, reach, everything. Again, when Manny was in his prime or, you know, honestly, when he was still in his late 30s and early 40s before he retired, he could have handled that. His speed was still there, the consistency was still there. He wasn't running for political office and doing all this other stuff and taking time off. We see this time and time again when a boxer retires, takes a long time off and then comes back, it usually again outside of George Foreman, rest in peace to the goat. It usually doesn't go well. And I don't think this is going to either. And it's clear to me that this is done for, you know, a staging of an event versus the actual competitive nature of the fight. Who knows, maybe I'm wrong and that Manny still has it. But I'm just going to go with what makes the most sense. The WBC and whoever they partner with on this is going to try to sell tickets off of it. Okay, that's fine. But what's the point of the belt if this is the match? What are you saying as the WBC to all the actual contenders that you have ranked at welterweight for this belt? When you go, okay, that's fine, you guys worked and you earned it again, this is the people that want to talk about the four belt system. You have these rankings. The WBC right now has Devin Haney ranked number one at welterweight for that belt. Why would you not make that match? Or even someone like Suleimane, the French guy that's ranked number two or even a Connor Ben, who they have ranked number three in their welterweight system right now. You can't tell me Devin Haney and Barrios is not something you're interested in as a company. I get it. Manny probably sells more than both of those two. But if we're just talking about selling, if we're just talking about what draws eyes, why are we having Manny fight for a belt in the first place? If Mario wanted to fight Manny, just have him vacate the belt. That's fine. If you want to just do a fight, just have him vacate. But the fact that you're bringing in Manny and the big draw is Manny can become World champion again after not taking out any of those names. It does delegitimize that belt. It does delegitimize the matchup. It makes not almost no, it makes absolutely no sense. And again, even if Manny is to win it, fair play, that would be fucking insane and it would be a massive, massive accomplishment for Manny. What does it say about the specific rankings of certain belt players organizations and if they even mean anything or not? Why fight for a number one ranking when someone can come out of retirement and just jump right in front, you know what I'm saying? It just, it didn't make any sense. And again, if it's just a regular matchup, if you go, you know what, we've been working on this, I guess they've been saying for a year now between Barrios and Manny Pacquiao and they want to do that fight, if that's the fight they want to do for whatever reason, you think Barrios fan base and Pacquiao's fan base is going to be a massive entertaining fight that doesn't need a belt, then go do that. Just strip Barrios of the belt and have the belt ready for two people that are actually in contention, that are competing at the world level currently that deserve an actual shot at the world title. So yeah, there's just a lot of things about this that I don't like. One, putting Manny in there without having a warm up fight for a guy that at 46 years old does need a warm up fight to just make sure and assess that he still has the ability to do this, I think is a bad idea. Putting him in a world title fight after a four year layoff I think is an even worse idea because what you do is compound the risk of him stepping in because now you could have done a 10 round fight, now it'll be 12. He hasn't fought in four years and that was a loss in his last fight in 2021. My light just went out. We're going to keep going. He's at a weight class that just is not his natural high level weight class. And again, I think everybody will know at this point it's clear that the WBC is doing this to cash out on Manny's name. That to me doesn't feel right when it's for a world title again as a pro bout. Strip Barrios to the belt. Two grown men want to get in there and box. Even if it's not a good idea for Manny. I get it, that's fine. I said the same thing about Jake And Mike doesn't make a lot of sense, but two grown men and that they can make money doing it. I just hope that everybody knows the risk involved and how it's a bad idea for the older guy because they're probably going to get hurt very badly. But when you do it at world level, when you do it at world championship level and you see what Manny looks like right now compared to what he looked like even four years ago, this is a bad idea. That being said, will I watch it? Yeah, yeah, I probably will because that's kind of my job. Ring magazine, I'm here. But at the same time, it's not going to be something that I can sit here and go, whoo, yeah, I'm behind this. This is a great idea. This is something that we should keep doing, we should think about for the future. No, no. And this happens in all types of different sports. The nostalgia of yesterday's greats, trying to reap the benefits of today's money or whatever else is going into these conversations. It's usually almost always a bad idea. And this one is as well. And yeah, I don't really know that there's any way to disagree with that. But you guys let me know what you think in the comments below. Is this going to go over well? How does Manny Pacquiao even look after this four year layoff? And why is the WBC doing this outside of money? Because I think Manny Pacquiao could potentially get really badly hurt and I think it's going to be a terrible look to bring him in and usher him into a world title fight at 46 years old with no reason to do it other than just money. But that's what I think. You guys let me know in the comments below. And yeah, like I said, press conference this week in New York. Stay tuned. Ton of content coming, by the way, if you're not subscribed over. On the audio side of all of this, the audio platforms of the Way concept presented by the Ring magazine, make sure you do that at Spotify. At Apple Podcasts, we have audio stuff coming out all the time. You guys want to check out, but stay locked in right here. Oh, Saturday we're probably gonna do a watch party for the Misfits event as well. Stay tuned in for that. I guess we're gonna do it here from Chloe Concept hq. We'll figure that out. But you guys let me know what you think about this Manny Pacquiao Mario Barrio situation. I just don't like it. Not for a world title. Not after the four year layoff. It just. It's nonsensical, doesn't make any sense. But as far as what happens, could Manny pull off a miracle and George Foreman this thing? I don't think so. But maybe July 19th in Las Vegas. I just think it's gonna end bad. But I don't have those answers, so I guess we'll find out.
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You're listening to an Iheart podcast.