Letters To An
Overseas Friend.

I’m watching the Manny Pacquiao v Oscar De La Hoya match because it turns out that Manny Pacquiao and Oscar De La Hoya have fought. I do this thing sometimes where I delineate eras of various things and assume there was no overlap. Oscar De La Hoya, the golden boy, the teenager of destiny being thrust in your face every time you were trying to catch up on what The Dream Team did that day in Barcelona so much that, after hearing it enough times, you believe he can’t lose. Then, shoot, he doesn’t lose. In Barcelona. An event of my childhood. Manny Pacquiao who came into my life fairly recently, the Pambansang Kamao, the de facto Korean champion of the world. A small Asian is a small Asian, after all. But the two fighters did overlap, which doesn’t seem likely to me, even though they were born about 5-6 years apart.

Yes, Thomas, I watch bygone boxing matches on Youtube. A fake Ray Leonard bolo punch is entertaining as hell, part heroic swashbuckling and part hideous embarrassment for everyone involved, and my brain tells me a thing can’t be both those things at the same time, yet I feel them so I guess my brain is wrong. Boxing also offers some of the most human of human breakdowns. No Mas. Oliver McCall. Until the internet and Youtube verification, I always wondered if the Oliver McCall incident really went down like I remembered. Did it ever.

It’s not really a good fight, Pacquiao – De La Hoya. I doubt that I’m ruining anything for you, but… SPOILER ALERT! Things get ugly and, at the end, a little weird.

After the eighth round, you hear disembodied voices hovering around a very puffy and forlorn De La Hoya discussing whether or not to stop the fight. “Oscar, do you have a headache?” “Oscar, are you dizzy?” That’s what you say to an ER patient. Not a champion. But the phrase that guts De La Hoya not just of his glory but of his dignity, is “Oscar, if you don’t punch back I’m going to stop the fight.” This statement is made several times. One time, it sounds like Oscar mumbles something in response. Or he didn’t which means no response at all because his face doesn’t move. Oscar is so curiously blank, but not a shocked or awed or brain dead blank. A thinking blank. The blankness of introspection. In that moment, he’s alone in the world. With Oscar’s compliance, the disembodied voices decide to stop the fight before the ninth round. Oscar barely reacts. He just gets up without acknowledging his corner, walks towards Pacquiao, and hugs him.

Michael buffer announcing the stoppage- “Today, we turn a page…” Sounds kind of sombre. And it is a sombre event. Basically, he’s saying the Oscar De La Hoya he knew and loved is done. Then his tone picks up again in announcing that Pacquiao is the winner. Don’t be sad, we have Manny now, said Michael Buffer.

Michael Buffer’s pronunciation of Spanish names sounds impeccable to me. Is he fluent in Spanish? For how long? Was working on his Spanish pronunciation a career move? Say Bob Costas for me.

“Let’s get ready to rumble!” is genius in delivered simplicity. Kind of like I ♥ NY. Or “Mind the gap.” A simple proposition or assertion thoroughly owned by the delivery that turns it into a cultural touchstone.

Before the fight, Buffer asks us to please welcome the lovely and talented Karylle as she sings the national anthem of the Philippines. Of course, if she’s so lovely and talented, do we need Michael Buffer to tell us so? Yes, because hustling the build-up is in his DNA.

In the post fight interview, rather than offer real answers to the questions, De La Hoya can only repeat that Manny is a great fighter and he has nothing bad to say about him (no one says he had) and he deserves everything. Then, when Larry Merchant asks “Are you shocked?” about the beat down, the few working muscles on De La Hoya’s face finally spring into action as if to hint at a thought process, and Oscar offers his first real answer. For an athlete, I find De La Hoya can be a fairly good interview. Nothing as good as Floyd Sr. though, at least when it comes to father-son relationships between Oscar De La Hoya and Fernando Vargas.

Thanks to Brian Phillips, all relatively larger athletes now remind me of ents. Nothing about 5′-10^1/2” Oscar De La Hoya is arboreal, except when he’s lumbering away from or nearly felled by 5’6″ Manny Pacquiao. Another sign of a good writer: your metaphors similes stick and travel.

Manny and Oscar have a little exchange post fight. One of several exchanges, but to me, the one that mattered most. According to Larry Merchant’s paraphrasing, it went like this:

Manny: You're still my idol.
Oscar: No, now you're my idol.

While watching a part of Algeria v Germany from a eatery/bar in Oregon:

Nadia notes the “normal” haircuts on the German players. No faux hawks or ponytails or Beckham’s (which might be a fax hawk or ponytail). Not a single lock spiked or a single tip frosted. Unusual look for a soccer team. I say you can set your watch to those guys. She responds with they just have conservative do’s. The German passing looks more precise and reliable than the Algerians’.

A German player looks to have legitimately injured a hamstring. Since no one was near him at the time, you’d think he’s not faking it. But who knows. He also didn’t instantly grab his face or the injured area; instead, he just goes down in a heap, suggesting the genuine stress of authentic injury. He eventually gets taken away on a hand-carried bright orange stretcher. He could kind of walk and certainly stand but I suppose the stretcher is standard practice. This is something I haven’t seen in American sports. Injure a leg in America (and Canada by extension) and you walk or hop off with help from a trainer or two or get carted off on a modified golf cart. Stretchers are reserved for suspicions of spine related injuries. This all feels about right in the soccer v North America context. Watching an athlete get carried away by a gaggle of people on a medical contraption can give that athlete an air of neediness to the American eye. That wouldn’t fly in America when the athlete could conceivably leave the field at least partially under his own determination. If taken away on a motorized vehicle, it only amplifies the danger and ruggedness of the sport. This fits neatly within American and un-American preconceptions and stereotypes and might play a small subconscious role in soccer’s inability to break through in The States.

A hand carried stretcher for a single leg injury makes sense to me. But I don’t know if I would take one if I could still hop on one leg.

At one point the Algerian goalie was physically standing on his head. That expression, then, might come from an actual observation, as opposed to “found another gear” and “110%,” which come from a place of misunderstanding physiology and mathematics, respectively.

Richard Sherman is a complicated man.