CHICAGO—Highly-regarded cutman Joe Chavez has seen the fierce punching power and the indomitable fighting spirit of Manny Pacquiao from both sides of the ring.
He’s toiled as a Pacman cutman and worked in the same capacity for Miguel Cotto in the Nov. 14 Las Vegas beatdown the Boricua Bomber took.
So, when I asked the veteran who he would favor in the mega fight between Megamanny and Floyd Mayweather, I expected no less than a reasoned, thoughtful approach.
Chavez, one of the more popular cornermen in boxing, stroked his chin several times as if trying to render a Fistic Freudian analysis.
Then he just laughed.
“I can’t pick Manny over Floyd,” Chavez said, “and I can’t choose Floyd over Manny either. They’re both just such great talents, different in style but similar in the depth of their boxing ability.
“Maybe I could just flip a coin on this one. I don’t know if I have ever seen anyone faster or better defensively than Floyd is, the incredible way he moves around the ring. He always knows what he is doing and where he is relative to his opponents.”
Then Chavez talked about his recent birds eye of Manny bashing Cotto about the MGM ring.
“It was impressive how Manny took so many shots, I mean real, hard shots from Miguel, and he walked right through them. You had to be a bit amazed at seeing that. Miguel hit Manny with shots that knocked other guys down and sometimes down and out but they couldn’t stop him from coming in on the attack.”
When a hard core fight guy like Chavez speaks about picking a winner by a coin toss—maybe heads it’s Pacman, tails it’s Money May—he is not joking.
Like the rest of us, Chavez is licking his chops for a fistic feast of epic proportions.
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