Friday, April 24, 2015
Foot Locker – It’s Really Happening feat. Manny Pacquiao Part 2
"The last time Manny Pacquiao was in a Foot Locker commercial he found out the fight that everyone wanted to see was finally happening. Except it wasn’t really, it was just a commercial. But now it is. Even though this is also a Foot Locker commercial."
Thursday, April 23, 2015
The Matrix: Neo meets Pacman
Add Keanu Reeves to the list of celebrity supporters of Manny Pacquiao in his fight with Floyd Mayweather Jr. on May 2.
Wednesday, April 22, 2015
Wednesday, April 15, 2015
Thursday, April 9, 2015
RollingStone: Manny Pacquiao and the Fight of His Life
By Michaell Weinreb
There is the inner circle, there is the outer circle and there are the ever-widening concentric circles of hangers-on who drift about the periphery like a distant star hovering around the sun. There are the members of the Filipino media who show up every day, and there are the members of the American media who show up in fits and starts (today Rolling Stone, tomorrow The New York Times), and there are the HBO executives, and there is the promoter and there is the camera crew the promoter hired to document everything.
There is the security detail and there are the pressmen and the managers and the canines and the trainers and the celebrities, because it would not be a Pacquiao camp without the celebrities. One day, it was Chappelle; on another day, it was Robert Duvall; sometimes, it's Mark Wahlberg, and a day or two from now, it will be a fellow Christian soldier named Tebow. On this particular afternoon, a sedan lurches forward into one of the spots and discharges a gadfly of a fight promoter named Bob Arum, who casually introduces his driver as Bill Friedkin, the man who directed the most iconic celluloid car chase of the 20th century.
Continue reading HERE
There is the inner circle, there is the outer circle and there are the ever-widening concentric circles of hangers-on who drift about the periphery like a distant star hovering around the sun. There are the members of the Filipino media who show up every day, and there are the members of the American media who show up in fits and starts (today Rolling Stone, tomorrow The New York Times), and there are the HBO executives, and there is the promoter and there is the camera crew the promoter hired to document everything.
There is the security detail and there are the pressmen and the managers and the canines and the trainers and the celebrities, because it would not be a Pacquiao camp without the celebrities. One day, it was Chappelle; on another day, it was Robert Duvall; sometimes, it's Mark Wahlberg, and a day or two from now, it will be a fellow Christian soldier named Tebow. On this particular afternoon, a sedan lurches forward into one of the spots and discharges a gadfly of a fight promoter named Bob Arum, who casually introduces his driver as Bill Friedkin, the man who directed the most iconic celluloid car chase of the 20th century.
Continue reading HERE
Don't Believe The Hype: Mayweather-Pacquiao Is Not Good Vs. Evil
by Diana Moskovitz
Deadspin
The many failings of Floyd Mayweather to follow the basic rules on how to be a good human being are well documented. He’s a serial woman beater who once evicted his father and pleaded no contest to threatening his children. His odiousness speaks for itself. But his competitor, Manny Pacquiao, is busy (via his handlers) doing his best to paint himself as a good guy, the man who will get revenge for all the wrong Floyd has wrought on the world. Good vs. evil is an easy sell of a narrative, and sportswriters have been quick to buy it as fact. But it’s insultingly shallow, and requires conveniently forgetting that Pacquiao is a shithead too.
Like Mayweather, Pacquiao’s dirty history is a mixture of personal failures amplified by the power that comes with wealth and celebrity. He has spoken out against gay marriage, insisting he has gay relatives but still opposes same-sex marriage because, “It’s the law of God,” was a mostly absent congressman in his home country last year, and didn’t step in when a basketball player in the Philippines was fired for stating the obvious—that the 5-foot-7 Pacquiao’s basketball career was a stunt and a joke. His concerns about the laws of God apparently didn’t conflict with allegedly mauling a fellow politician or cheating on his wife. The Phillippine government says he owes tens of millions in back taxes. And should you try to take comfort in thinking that perhaps Pacquiao at least respects women more than Mayweather does, remember that he fought against legislation in the Philippines that would mandate sex education, subsidize contraception, and expand family-planning offerings. And he is not just some random celebrity with a platform; he’s a politician who actively affects policy. That’s objectively more harmful than the usual powerless bigot-athlete.
Freddie Roach wants you to forget all that. Given his man’s cut of the PPV pot, he’s literally banking on it. The longtime trainer fed mindlessly scribbling reporters their talking points, and they’ve dutifully repeated them. USA Today is just one example, in a piece under the all-knowing headline.
“Pacquiao fueled by Mayweather’s domestic abuse.”
“Manny is really against domestic violence,” Roach said. “It is a big issue maybe in the Philippines for him and being a congressman he can control some of that stuff. That is a big plus for me that Manny does not like the guy, I think the killer instinct is going to come back a lot faster.” ...
“(I see the fight as) good against evil, yes. I have even thought about bringing a couple of the metro cops from Vegas in to tell Manny how many times (Mayweather) has been arrested and how bad of a guy he is, but I decided I can’t go that far. He already doesn’t like him; I think we are OK.
The article doesn’t say what, if anything, Pacquiao has done or might do back in the Philippines to prevent domestic violence. Hell, it doesn’t even quote Pacquiao himself. This is pure, cynical salesmanship from Roach, who worked with post-prison Mike Tyson, a convicted rapist whose victim testified that the boxer laughed about the assault while she cried.
Then there’s Rolling Stone, which portrays Roach utilizing Mayweather’s badness as a training tool:
But with Mayweather, Roach can work Manny’s natural antipathy: He’s a bad guy, he’ll whisper into Pacquiao’s ear sometimes. He’s bad for boxing. You’ll be doing a courtesy to the world if you knock him out.
“He knows he’s a bad person,” Roach says.
At least reporter Michael Weinreb actually asked Pacquiao about his feelings toward Mayweather, though he got an answer oblique to Roach’s straightforward trope-usage. “Usually I don’t comment on his personal life,” Pacquiao tells Weinreb. Perhaps that’s true; it’s also a convenient way of outsourcing the media manipulation while keeping his hands clean.
Even older than leaving the hype to the hype men is the urge to package a fight in biblical terms, good vs. evil, the bad boy vs. the avenging angel, the evil woman-beater versus the defender of all. To see exactly how much stock to put into these roles, recall Mayweather’s 2001 bout with Diego Corrales, who had been charged with assaulting his pregnant wife. Leading up to the fight, Mayweather declared he would beat Corrales for “every battered woman in the world.” Mayweather won and went on to be arrested multiple times on charges that he violently battered the women in his life. Virtue is fungible.
Which leaves us here, three weeks from the biggest fight of the young century. There are plenty of reasons, based purely on what’s likely to happen inside the ring, to avoid the fight. But sports is never just about the act itself. It’s about the the storylines, the unknown, the unexpected, the sides we choose, and what those choices say about us. We do define ourselves by the team or the athlete we back. And in this case, we have no comfortable choices.
Sure this all can be categorized and analyzed until the lesser evil is identified to our satisfaction. What’s worse, beating up women or trying to make it harder for millions of them to get birth control? Do you mind less the absent politician or the abusive father? Which is easier to tolerate, a man who leveraged his fame and fortune for favors across the Philippines or a man who leveraged his fame and fortune for favors across the United States? Athletes are human; they exist on the same ethical continuum as the rest of us, stretching from saints to sinners with a long, murky middle where most reside. It should be enough to sell this fight that Mayweather and Pacquiao are the two best boxers of their generation. But don’t let the appeal to morality confuse you: that’s all they’re good for.
Deadspin
The many failings of Floyd Mayweather to follow the basic rules on how to be a good human being are well documented. He’s a serial woman beater who once evicted his father and pleaded no contest to threatening his children. His odiousness speaks for itself. But his competitor, Manny Pacquiao, is busy (via his handlers) doing his best to paint himself as a good guy, the man who will get revenge for all the wrong Floyd has wrought on the world. Good vs. evil is an easy sell of a narrative, and sportswriters have been quick to buy it as fact. But it’s insultingly shallow, and requires conveniently forgetting that Pacquiao is a shithead too.
Like Mayweather, Pacquiao’s dirty history is a mixture of personal failures amplified by the power that comes with wealth and celebrity. He has spoken out against gay marriage, insisting he has gay relatives but still opposes same-sex marriage because, “It’s the law of God,” was a mostly absent congressman in his home country last year, and didn’t step in when a basketball player in the Philippines was fired for stating the obvious—that the 5-foot-7 Pacquiao’s basketball career was a stunt and a joke. His concerns about the laws of God apparently didn’t conflict with allegedly mauling a fellow politician or cheating on his wife. The Phillippine government says he owes tens of millions in back taxes. And should you try to take comfort in thinking that perhaps Pacquiao at least respects women more than Mayweather does, remember that he fought against legislation in the Philippines that would mandate sex education, subsidize contraception, and expand family-planning offerings. And he is not just some random celebrity with a platform; he’s a politician who actively affects policy. That’s objectively more harmful than the usual powerless bigot-athlete.
Freddie Roach wants you to forget all that. Given his man’s cut of the PPV pot, he’s literally banking on it. The longtime trainer fed mindlessly scribbling reporters their talking points, and they’ve dutifully repeated them. USA Today is just one example, in a piece under the all-knowing headline.
“Pacquiao fueled by Mayweather’s domestic abuse.”
“Manny is really against domestic violence,” Roach said. “It is a big issue maybe in the Philippines for him and being a congressman he can control some of that stuff. That is a big plus for me that Manny does not like the guy, I think the killer instinct is going to come back a lot faster.” ...
“(I see the fight as) good against evil, yes. I have even thought about bringing a couple of the metro cops from Vegas in to tell Manny how many times (Mayweather) has been arrested and how bad of a guy he is, but I decided I can’t go that far. He already doesn’t like him; I think we are OK.
The article doesn’t say what, if anything, Pacquiao has done or might do back in the Philippines to prevent domestic violence. Hell, it doesn’t even quote Pacquiao himself. This is pure, cynical salesmanship from Roach, who worked with post-prison Mike Tyson, a convicted rapist whose victim testified that the boxer laughed about the assault while she cried.
Then there’s Rolling Stone, which portrays Roach utilizing Mayweather’s badness as a training tool:
But with Mayweather, Roach can work Manny’s natural antipathy: He’s a bad guy, he’ll whisper into Pacquiao’s ear sometimes. He’s bad for boxing. You’ll be doing a courtesy to the world if you knock him out.
“He knows he’s a bad person,” Roach says.
At least reporter Michael Weinreb actually asked Pacquiao about his feelings toward Mayweather, though he got an answer oblique to Roach’s straightforward trope-usage. “Usually I don’t comment on his personal life,” Pacquiao tells Weinreb. Perhaps that’s true; it’s also a convenient way of outsourcing the media manipulation while keeping his hands clean.
Even older than leaving the hype to the hype men is the urge to package a fight in biblical terms, good vs. evil, the bad boy vs. the avenging angel, the evil woman-beater versus the defender of all. To see exactly how much stock to put into these roles, recall Mayweather’s 2001 bout with Diego Corrales, who had been charged with assaulting his pregnant wife. Leading up to the fight, Mayweather declared he would beat Corrales for “every battered woman in the world.” Mayweather won and went on to be arrested multiple times on charges that he violently battered the women in his life. Virtue is fungible.
Which leaves us here, three weeks from the biggest fight of the young century. There are plenty of reasons, based purely on what’s likely to happen inside the ring, to avoid the fight. But sports is never just about the act itself. It’s about the the storylines, the unknown, the unexpected, the sides we choose, and what those choices say about us. We do define ourselves by the team or the athlete we back. And in this case, we have no comfortable choices.
Sure this all can be categorized and analyzed until the lesser evil is identified to our satisfaction. What’s worse, beating up women or trying to make it harder for millions of them to get birth control? Do you mind less the absent politician or the abusive father? Which is easier to tolerate, a man who leveraged his fame and fortune for favors across the Philippines or a man who leveraged his fame and fortune for favors across the United States? Athletes are human; they exist on the same ethical continuum as the rest of us, stretching from saints to sinners with a long, murky middle where most reside. It should be enough to sell this fight that Mayweather and Pacquiao are the two best boxers of their generation. But don’t let the appeal to morality confuse you: that’s all they’re good for.
Wednesday, April 8, 2015
RollingStone: Inside Manny Pacquiao's Fight Club
Last month, Rolling Stone sent author Michael Weinreb to Los Angeles, to spend a day with boxer Manny Pacquiao as he trained for his May 2 fight with Floyd Mayweather. Turns out, the sparring and speed-bag work was only part of the story – the constant circus that follows his every move was impossible to ignore (Pacquiao is arguably the most famous fighter in the world, after all).
"There is the inner circle, there is the outer circle and there are the ever-widening concentric circles of hangers-on who drift about the periphery like a distant star hovering around the sun," Weinreb writes of the scene at Wild Card.
"There are the members of the Filipino media who show up every day, and there are the members of the American media who show up in fits and starts, and there are the HBO executives, and there is the promoter and there is the camera crew the promoter hired to document everything. There is the security detail and there are the pressmen and the managers and the canines and the trainers and the celebrities, because it would not be a Pacquiao camp without the celebrities."
It also would not be a Pacquiao camp without lunch at his favorite Thai restaurant, Nat's, a few jokes from entourage members Buboy and Nonoy or trainer Freddie Roach filling the swear jar he's set up at ringside ($5 per profanity, by the way). Through it all, photographer Leslie dela Vega snapped away, and here's her photo diary of the day with the Pride of the Philippines.
Continue reading HERE
"There is the inner circle, there is the outer circle and there are the ever-widening concentric circles of hangers-on who drift about the periphery like a distant star hovering around the sun," Weinreb writes of the scene at Wild Card.
"There are the members of the Filipino media who show up every day, and there are the members of the American media who show up in fits and starts, and there are the HBO executives, and there is the promoter and there is the camera crew the promoter hired to document everything. There is the security detail and there are the pressmen and the managers and the canines and the trainers and the celebrities, because it would not be a Pacquiao camp without the celebrities."
It also would not be a Pacquiao camp without lunch at his favorite Thai restaurant, Nat's, a few jokes from entourage members Buboy and Nonoy or trainer Freddie Roach filling the swear jar he's set up at ringside ($5 per profanity, by the way). Through it all, photographer Leslie dela Vega snapped away, and here's her photo diary of the day with the Pride of the Philippines.
Continue reading HERE
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)