Idle Hands
M. Abduh

As soon as the final bell sounded, the nonsense began. “I beat him,” Adrian Broner repeated as his cornermen removed his gloves. I looked down at my notes and wondered if I had missed a few rounds⎯maybe all twelve. I had the fight 118-109 in favor of Manny Pacquiao. Broner I gave one round. The fourth, I suppose. Then he said something about being robbed, and I thought, if he cared about being robbed, he would have done more to stop the twelve round mugging he just experienced. But I have come to expect these things from Broner, the performances and the antics to follow. As many fight people have rightfully said, he is a case of unfulfilled promise, squandered talent. I am not simply referring to his clowning. Even the Greatest, Muhammad Ali, clowned. In a 1977 exhibition against Michael Dokes, Ali, pinned in a corner, arms on the ropes, dodged twenty-one punches in ten seconds. Dokes looked like he was shadow boxing. When Ali reappeared, he opened his eyes wide and wiggled his hips to further taunt Dokes. Ali could play the fool. Throughout the years there were bear traps, blank pistols, and gorilla costumes, but then he would go to Manilla, to Zaire, to San Diego (where he would finish a fight against Ken Norton with a broken jaw), step on the ring apron, and get dead serious. The great ones know that there’s a time for this and a time for that.

Broner purported to know this as well, stating that his initials A.B. would now stand for “Another Beginning.” This connected with fans. Who doesn’t love a redemption story? But by the end of the bout and the post-fight conference, one journalist said that A.B. still stands for “Ass Backwards.”

It was evident before the fighters came out of their dressing rooms; the crowd at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas that night was with Pacquiao. “Manny! Manny!” they exclaimed in unison before the start of action. For his part, the old man looked good for forty, and, in fairness, Broner, freshly shaven, too, looked ready to go.

Round one. Pacquiao came out jabbing, throwing combinations, forcing the action. Broner has never been a swarmer, but in the opening round, he barely let his hands go twice. It was more of the same in the second and the third rounds.

Round four. Broner did a better job of countering, winning his first (and on my scorecard, his last) round of the fight. It’s not that he was especially busy; he simply did enough to edge out Pacman in the round.

Round seven. Pacquiao hurt Broner with a barrage of punches to the head and body. It would be the first of two times that Pacquiao clearly had A.B. in trouble. The second time came in the ninth, when he hit Broner with a straight left on the chin. Broner staggered back to the ropes, and Pacman went on the attack. Whenever the senator pressed the action, Broner went in search of new land on the other side of the ring. By the “championship rounds,” it seemed Broner was only in there to survive. Some, however, saw another reason for his idle hands. In an interview after the fight, former four-division champion Roy Jones Jr. was asked about Broner’s inactivity. It wasn’t that he was just trying to survive, Jones offered. He was looking for one big punch. Either way, looking for a punch and throwing one are two different things, as points are rarely scored for looking. Throughout twelve rounds, Broner threw only 295 punches (approximately 25 per round), landing only fifty. Fifty. (This means he landed only 17% of his punches, or an average of four per round. Four.) Pacquiao threw 568 punches throughout the fight, landing 112, more than double his opponent. By the final bell, it was clear to everyone in attendance⎯besides Broner, his corner, and “everybody” he knew⎯that Pacquiao was the winner. Two of the judges scored it 116-112 in favor of Pacquiao, while the third scored it 117-111.

The farce. When announcer Jim Gray asked Broner what he thought about the fight, he exclaimed, “I beat him! Everybody out there know I beat him…I hit him clean more times.” Gray calmly informed him that he hadn’t thrown more than eight punches in any round. Broner was deeply offended at Gray’s ability to count and accused the announcer of being “against me.” Then came the conspiracy theories. “What they trying to do,” he said, “is get that money again with Pacquiao and Floyd.” It’s not as if the idea of a fix in boxing is out of realm of possibility. There have been fixes in the fight game as long as there have been fights. But if this one was fixed, Broner was in on it. He may not have taken a dive per se, but he certainly pulled plenty of punches. Gray then reminded Broner that he was 3-3-1 in his last seven contests and asked him what he would do next. “Hey, I’m 3-3-1 in my last seven,” he said, “but I’ll be 7-0 against you.” Maybe, I thought. But only if he throws more punches than he did tonight.