The Transnational Boxing Rankings Board: May 2 Will Crown Welterweight King and May Launch Pac Into Boxing History

03/18/2015 Eddy Pronishev

The Transnational Boxing Rankings Board, an independent, international, noncommercial rankings organization, announces that the winner of the Floyd Mayweather Jr.–Manny Pacquiao fight on May 2 will be crowned the true welterweight champion of the world.

The 44-member board, representing 16 countries and five continents, does not acknowledge the various belts passed off as “world championships” and therefore does not acknowledge “unification” as anything more than hype. Its charter identifies the true divisional champions as those who defeat their rightful predecessor and holds that the first two ranked contenders alone can contest a vacant divisional throne.

Mayweather has been ranked #1 at welterweight since the board’s inaugural rankings were published in October 2012.

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Roach: “Please, give us a fair fight”

03/17/2015 Vitali Shaposhnikov

(Photo credit: Esther Lin/Showtime) If Floyd Mayweather Jr. has a place to call home in addition his actual house, it is the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nevada. This is the place where he knows everyone, and everybody knows him. Fighting at home it is believed, skews the benefit of the doubt in the hometown fighter’s direction. Whether it is the judges or the referee, it seems as though there is a popular belief in the concept of an unbalanced evenhandedness present.

“I know all the referees, I know all the good ones, I know the great ones. I think they all respect me and Manny enough to give us a fair fight. That’s all I’m asking for”, said Roach in an interview with ABS CBN Sports.

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“Left-Hook Lounge Mailbag”: Would GGG Face Kovalev?, Mayweather Crossing Lines?, Rigondeaux in Pacquiao Camp?

03/16/201503/16/2015 Vivek Wallace

Ensei L. (Ontario, CA): I’m a huge GGG fan and looking at Kovalev, I couldn’t help but think about how great a matchup would be between the two. Do you ever see that fight happening down the line?

Vivek W. (ESB): As much as I would love to see that fight, I have very little hope that we will ever see it. It’s one of those topics that really challenges me, personally. You never want to take a negative or harsh disposition towards an emerging talent in the sport, but when you look at the negative narratives that follow proven commodities in the sport, contrasted by images drawn up to illustrate perceptions of those who aren’t, it’s just not proper. When I think of a Danny Garcia, or an Andre Ward, there’s a consistent rhetoric that almost mandates that they take on a certain level of competition or be banished to hell for not “proving themselves”.

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Floyd & Manny bring the star power in LA

03/12/2015 Michael Montero

http://youtu.be/vDSJdNgBuVE

Photos by Tiffany Lam – Today at the Nokia Theater in downtown Los Angeles Floyd Mayweather and Manny Pacquiao held the kickoff presser for what many are calling the fight of the century. Team Pacquiao arrived and hit the red carpet around 11:00am. Mayweather was scheduled to arrive at noon, but showed up a fashionable 40 minutes late. The official press conference started around 1:45pm pacific time and was aired live on ESPN SportsCenter; with HBO announcer Michael Buffer introducing Pacquiao, followed by Showtime announcer Jimmy Lennon Jr introducing Mayweather.

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Mayweather vs. Pacquiao: Saturday, May 2 Live on Pay-Per-View

03/12/201503/11/2015 HBO Boxing

LAS VEGAS (March 11, 2015) – Sports fans will be treated to the fight that has captured the attention of the entire world when boxing’s pound-for-pound king Floyd “Money” Mayweather steps into the ring to face eight-division world champion Manny “Pac-Man” Pacquiao in an epic welterweight world championship unification bout. The much-anticipated mega-fight will take place Saturday, May 2 at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas. Promoted by Mayweather Promotions and Top Rank Inc., the pay-per-view telecast will be co-produced and co-distributed by SHOWTIME PPV® and HBO Pay-Per-View® beginning at 9:00 p.m. ET/ 6:00 p.m. PT.

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Pacquiao: “I hope, this time he would be man enough to take some risks”

03/11/201503/10/2015 Vitali Shaposhnikov

Aside from the unstoppable media bombardment about the Floyd Mayweather Jr. vs. Manny Pacquiao bout, the fans are putting forward their long thought about opinions about who will win the fight, and why. Forums are crawling with back-and-forth discussions between the Mayweather Jr. and Pacquiao fans pleading with each other as to why one is right and the other is wide of the mark about the eventual outcome of the bout.

It seems that the Mayweather Jr. fans expect the fight to go as any other for Floyd due to his unmatched technical skill and ring I.Q. In most of his fights, Mayweather Jr. tends to pick his shots and throw as counter punches, taking advantage of his opponent’s mistakes and gaps in offense.

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Jeff Mayweather on Manny Pacquiao – “He’s a One Trick Pony!”

03/10/201503/09/2015 Jody Kohn

Now that it is signed, the talk on whether the fight between WBA/WBC welterweight champion Floyd Mayweather and WBO 147 pound champion Manny Pacquiao will ever be made can be put to rest with them both now signed to face each other two months from now on May 2nd, at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nevada. Instead, we can now focus on the particulars, and who has the actual advantage once they collide in the center of the ring.

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Left-Hook Lounge Mailbag: The Magnitude of Mayweather v Pacquiao, A Glimpse at Premier Boxing Championships, and Thoughts on Thurman v Bradley!!!

03/10/201503/09/2015 Vivek Wallace

Selan B. (Phoenix, AZ): You made a point on FaceBook the other day about the Mayweather v Pacquiao fight that I’d like you to revisit. Could you elaborate on your thoughts regarding the magnitude of this fight and the legacy of the fighters?

Vivek W. (ESB): In a nutshell, when we look at this fight, this is an event on the scale of nothing we’ve ever seen before, and arguably, nothing we will ever see again in this lifetime. Some have noted that the fight is “a few years too late”. My response is that the fight has reached this apex as a result of the fact that it did come this late. When this bout was initially proposed, the fighters were looking at proposed purses in the $30M dollar range. Floyd Mayweather found a way to land a deal that nets that every night out. When he said he wanted $100M for this bout, we said he was “talking stupid”. He now stands in place to earn a hair below that mark ($180M approx).

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Why the Mayweather vs. Pacquaio Fight isn’t All it Should Be

03/07/2015 Jazz Singh Gill

Ever since the positively earth shaking news that Floyd Mayweather is to fight Manny Pacquaio, fight fans around the world have been residing in some blissful parallel universe.
It is finally on. Two of the best to have ever done it will fight on May 2nd of this year. Let us all rejoice. Let us praise the fighters for overcoming the many obstacles facing them to make this momentous fight happen. Let us enjoy the build-up to what will be a classic fight.
And also, let us stop the bull.

Even though this fight is guaranteed to be one of the biggest in history, there are many reasons to temper your anticipation. This is not to say the occasion won’t be epic and that the fight will not be exciting, as the former is certain and the latter is fairly likely. However, there are certain factors that simply cannot be overlooked that decrease the magnitude of this fight.

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Pacquiao vs. Mayweather: A Historical Perspective

03/10/201503/06/2015 Seamus Raftery

By Seamus Raftery: While I was watching a short documentary recently on the career of heavyweight great Smokin’ Joe Frazier a comment by boxing journalist Thomas Hauser jumped out at me. Speaking of the famous third bout in the series between Frazier and his arch nemesis Muhammad Ali, Hauser suggested that while both men were slightly past their primes, on that day in Manila “their downward curves intersected at just the right point”. The result was one of the most celebrated fights in boxing history.

At a time when the boxing media and fans of the sport are fixated on the long awaited clash between Manny Pacquiao and Floyd Mayweather I couldn’t help but think about the parallel.
While the majority of the boxing public are overjoyed by the recent announcement there are a few who feel these modern greats have left it too late. In fact even the exhilarated fans and scribes are probably in agreement but are merely determined to remain optimistic, and are just happy that it came together at all. It is, after all, still a fight between the two best welterweights in the world, at the very least.

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