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While promoting his next title defense, WBC lightweight champion David Diaz joked he had a strategy for combating Manny Pacquiao's best weapon: "I think the best thing I can do is meet his left hand with my face."
Diaz was too modest by half.
Certainly, he arranged meetings between his face and Pacquiao's left hand. But those were few compared to the fiesta his face had with Pacquiao's right.
So it went Saturday. Pacquiao brutalized Diaz en route to a TKO stoppage. The time of the end was 2:24 of Round 9. Like that mattered. By the time referee Vic Drakulich waved his hands over Diaz, the event's conclusion was entirely foregone. Pacquiao would either take Diaz's belt by unanimous scores of 12-0 or some merciful soul would intervene on Diaz's behalf.
The pre-fight odds heavily favored Pacquiao. But there were variables enough to make some of us wonder. How high in weight could Pacquiao travel with the same sum of speed and power? How would Pacquiao react to a relentless assault from a larger man? At the championship level, could one man really be that much faster than another?
No need to write the answers upside down at the bottom of the page: "Higher than 135." "What relentlessness? What assault?" "Yes, yes and yes."
For those who never gave Diaz a chance, the fight's opening minute was an affirming one. For the rest of us it was humbling in an almost silly way. Pacquiao was able to set his feet, leap forward, strike Diaz, land and hop out of harm's way in roughly the time it took Diaz to pull his right glove back to his temple. From an inch away.
But that move by Diaz, cruelly enough, brought some hope for a competitive fight. It showed Diaz had taken Pacquiao's left hand seriously in camp -- all self-deprecating strategies aside. As a fellow southpaw Diaz was able to give Pacquiao a different defensive look. He could close his lead shoulder and block Pacquiao's best punch.
It took Pacquiao all of a minute to figure this out and change tack. He threw a couple of jabs with his right hand and found Diaz's defense wanting. Then he winged a right hook. Diaz had readied himself for a left cross, but had he worked on blocking a right hook? Ah, not so much.
Freddie Roach has been right about his charge: Pacquiao really is that good. We needed to see him across from a southpaw to get it, but all the work Roach did with Pacquiao's right hand came to fruition. As Roach's masterwork, Pacquiao is now as capable of ruining a southpaw with his right as he is at ruining everyone else with his left.
The stubborn among us, though, had yet to give up hope for Diaz. In the fantastic interviews he gave, after all, Diaz promised resilience. He promised he would keep going forward until somebody gave in. But then Diaz hadn't moved forward a whole lot since the opening bell.
Pacquiao was beginning to slow in the third minute of each round, though. He was relaxing and bouncing -- or at least he was assaulting Diaz less openly. So Diaz was pawing a little with his jab and taking tentative steps forward. Tentative, ineffectual steps.
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| David Diaz received a lot of punishment from Manny Pacquiao. (AP) |
Unfortunately for Diaz, it wasn't. A few rounds later, when Diaz was the one fading, not Pacquiao, only pride and violence remained. Diaz's pride punished constantly by Pacquiao's violence.
For all his warrior spirit, things must have become a bit frightening for Diaz. When Diaz kept his hands up and moved backward, Pacquiao launched forward and slammed a right hook through his guard. When Diaz sent his shy right hand out to jab, Pacquiao snapped a left cross at the side of his head.
Through it all -- the blood, pain, fatigue and hopelessness -- Diaz somehow remained hopeful. He was the very last person to concede what thousands at Mandalay Bay no longer doubted. There was no way he could win and no reason for him to continue to try.
Then Pacquiao caught Diaz with the same shot he had used to drop Juan Manuel Marquez in March. A short left cross. Its force was twice magnified by the countervailing force of Diaz's head. For the last time Saturday night, Diaz's chin went in exactly the opposite direction of his body.
Diaz went down ugly. In the powerless posture of a man no longer his own master. His arms collapsed behind him, and his face hit the blue mat. Referee Drakulich correctly bypassed the 10-count.
Pacquiao delayed his celebration to unsuccessfully try lifting Diaz into a sitting position. Maybe Pacquiao didn't know the strength of his own punches. Proud as he was, Diaz needed a minute to gather himself on the stool in his corner.
Pacquiao's lightweight debut was monstrous. He was larger and more powerful than the champion he dethroned. Frankly, he looked ready to challenge the winner of Cotto-Margarito. That was the point of the exercise, of course.
But now what? Pacquiao might never again look so formidable at lightweight. Not against Joel Casamayor, not against Juan Manuel Marquez and definitely not against Nate Campbell.
So Pacquiao's people need to pay Paulie Malignaggi to get out of the way. Fight Ricky Hatton at 140 pounds in November. Based on dwindling ticket sales, it might be the only fight Pacquiao fans will fully embrace.
