Pacquiao: ESPN gets one right

Written by Lyman Hoyt   |   Thursday, July 16 2009

Manny Pacquiao along with trainer Freddy Roach.  While there's no shortage of anti-MMA sentiment at ESPN and many other mainstream sports media outlets, in this case the right man won the 2009 ESPY Award for 'Fighter of the Year'

ESPN long ago lapsed into self parody, more focused on promoting themselves than actually covering sports.  Here at SAVSCI, we jokingly refer to them as the ’24 hour poker and catchphrase network’.  Nothing is emblematic of their smug self satisfaction than the annual ‘ESPY Awards’, an Oscar style awards show created to give their jock sniffing producers a chance to rub shoulders with famous athletes while the on air ‘talent’ gets to regurgitate some more of their banal catch phrases.

In other words, we’re not predisposed to defend ESPN.  And we had no interest in watching their award show (to paraphrase our managing editor ‘I’d rather have my eyes pecked out by crows’).  Still, we were surprised to hear so many MMA fans and media grumbling about the 2009 ‘ESPY’ award for ‘Best Fighter’, presumably because it was given to a boxer instead of a mixed martial artist.  This time, at least, ESPN got it right.  Even if it was for the wrong reasons, or a case of the proverbial ‘blind squirrel finding an acorn’ the right man won the award.

With the exception of the excellent ‘Bellator Fighting Championships’—relegated to ESPN Deportes—and ‘MMA Live’—relegated to the Internet—the ESPN coverage of MMA ranges from transparently opportunistic to insulting.  The overall vibe their coverage conveys is that they’re ‘forced’ to cover it due to its popularity, but that their not happy about it.  After years of ignoring, dismissing and insulting the sport the sheer numbers have mandated their coverage of events like UFC 100.  On one level, that’s a victory for MMA but on another level it’s a cynical ploy by ESPN to exploit a sport they would like to see go away.

If you wanted to make the case that there is an ingrained anti-MMA bias at ESPN, most of us on the SAVSCI staff would be as eager to buy it as an Art Bell fan is to accept a US government extraterrestrial cover up conspiracy theory.  Except you’ll have to come up with something else other than the 2009 Best Fighter ‘ESPY’ Award as proof of their institutionalized disdain for our sport.  This year, at least, the right fighter won the award and it was boxer Manny Pacquiao.

Pacquiao beat out fellow pugilist ‘Sugar’ Shane Mosley and UFC fighters Lyoto Machida and Anderson Silva for the award, and we’re hard pressed to come up with a scenario in which you can argue that’s not the way it should be.  Obviously the bandwagon jumpers at ESPN were going to include UFC fighters and ignore more deserving non-Zuffa fighters. We’d have made a more compelling case for Russian fighting god Fedor Emelianenko or Compton, CA bad boy Nick Diaz as the MMA representatives.  In the past year ‘The Last Emperor’ made short work of two former UFC champions, while Diaz compiled a 5-0 mark since May 2008 with four KO’s and 1 submission.

Machida is a far more deserving nominee of the two UFC entrants—he became the promotion’s light heavyweight champ with amazing ease, following up a unanimous decision win over Tito Ortiz last May with dominating stoppages of Thiago Silva and Rashad Evans. A number of us SAVSCI staffers have never bought the Zuffa hype around Anderson Silva, but even if you did it’s hard to make a case for ‘The Spider’ based on his recent fights.   He knocked out a second tier light heavyweight last July, and then preened and pouted his way through two horrible title defenses against Patrick Cote and Thales Leites. 

Compared to the year that Manny Pacquiao enjoyed, there’s simply no comparison with either mixed martial artist.  Nor is there a compelling case to be made for ‘Sugar’ Shane Mosley.  He’s an exceptional fighter who won two fights in the past year, both by knockout over Ricardo Mayorga and Antonio Margarito.  We have nothing but respect for Mosley, whom we’ve argued on a number of occasions simply doesn’t get the appreciation that his considerable skill and accomplishments justify.

Nevertheless, there’s really not a good argument for either Mosley, Machida or certainly Silva over ‘Pac Man’.  All Pacquiao did since last June was KO a solid pro in David Diaz to win the WBC lightweight title, destroy Oscar De La Hoya to the point he decided to retire, and obliterate Ricky Hatton in two lopsided rounds.  His claim to the title of ‘pound for pound’ best in the sport became so unquestionable that it (along with rumored financial problems) lured ‘Pretty Boy’ Floyd Mayweather out of retirement.  All the while maintaining a rock star like level of popularity in his native Philippines with suggestions that he’ll be able to assume the presidency of the country should he ever want it. One of the more foolish comments made this year was on the English language broadcast of the 2008 K-1 World GP Final where it was suggested that the event would ‘determine the best standup fighter on the planet’.  That determination had been made earlier that evening in Las Vegas, when Pacquiao brutalized De La Hoya.

We realize that there are boxing enthusiasts who’ll never give MMA its due, as well as MMA fans that are unfortunately disdainful of ‘the sweet science’.  Here at THE SAVAGE SCIENCE, we’re as quick as anyone to jump to the defense of MMA when the mainstream media defames it.  In this case, the right fighter in the right sport was named the 2009 ‘Fighter of the Year’.   In this case, it’s in the best interest of the sport for MMA fans to understand and accept this fact.  There will no doubt be instances when MMA is unfairly slighted by the mainstream media in the future, and by not ‘crying wolf’ about Pacquiao’s win now we’ll have more intellectual ammunition to argue our point when it does occur.  

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