Game Over For PacMan?

Boxing

I may not be as knowledgeable about boxing as I am the UFC, but I think I have a pretty good idea on who won a fight.  On Saturday Manny Pacquiao beat Timothy Bradley for most of the 12-round title fight, and fans thought he would cruise to his 55th career victory, and keep his 15 fight win streak intact. Instead, he lost to a shocking split decision (113-115, 115-113, 115-113), earning a victory in only one of the judge's scorecards. Both judges that gave Bradley the win had him winning 5 of the last 6 rounds.

Many experts have floated around reasons why the decision went the way it did, and these are the four most popular reasons:

1) Bob Arum, Pacquiao and Bradley's promoter, had fixed the fight. This makes sense on two levels. First, this was Pacquiao's last fight under contract with Arum, but if he lost Arum had a guaranteed rematch clause in the contract. Thus, if Pacquiao lost then Arum could get one last payday from his star fighter. Also, rumors are that Arum wants a large cut from a proposed fight with Floyd Mayweather, which is one of the issues holding up the fight. If Pacquiao really wants to fight Floyd, it may mean breaking up with Arum. Secondly, Pacquiao could have been involved in it too, since the rematch would make him a ton of money from people waiting to see more controversy. Since it's Pacquiao's fourth career loss, it wouldn't mean as much to him as it would for example the undefeated Mayweather. Am I the only person that found it fishy that Bradley already had a date in mind for a rematch during his post-fight interview.

2) Some big time bettors made sure that Bradley won. On Friday, there was a ton of money coming in on Bradley, enough to change the line over 30 points. For you non-degenerate gamblers, this means that a $100 bet on Bradley would have paid out $380 on Thursday, but only $350 on Friday night (it may not seem like a lot until you realize that some people bet thousands or even millions on the fight). The lines vary based on how much money is coming in for a particular fighter, and a 30 point swing means that a large sum of money was bet on Bradley. If that large amount of money was placed on a fight, the judges might have seen a cut of that to make sure Bradley won.

3) Bradley actually did win the fight. This would have to be answered by someone with more experience than me. However I do notice when watching a UFC fight Joe Rogan and Mike Goldberg are scoring a fight different than I am, and can sometimes persuade a viewer that a fighter is winning when he really isn't. The judges don't listen to a broadcast, and should be completely unbiased. Perhaps if I were to rewatch the fight with the sound muted I might have thought Bradley won. 

4) It's just incompetent judging. You've seen refs make bad calls in football, umps call a guy safe when he was out in baseball, and judges scoring a UFC fight wrong, so it could have just been an honest guy that made a mistake, but I highly doubt it.

All that really matters is that it is another black eye for the sport of boxing. More and more fans are turning off the sport and tuning into UFC. When Pacquiao and Mayweather hang up their gloves boxing's days as a major draw are over.

UFC

To be fair, UFC is having their own major problem these past two weeks, and that is fighter injuries killing their announced cards. In the past two weeks, these are the major changes to fights scheduled for the next two months  

• Thiago Silva out of his UFC 149 fight with Shogun Rua 
• Thiago Alves out of UFC 149 fight against Yoshihiro Akiyama
• Michael Bisping out of UFC 149 fight against Tim Boetsch
• Jon Fitch out of UFC on Fuel against Aaron Simpson
• Brian Stann out of UFC on Fox 4 against Hector Lombard
• Vitor Belfort out of UFC 147 against Wanderlei Silva (TUF Brazil Coaches Fight)
• Jose Aldo out of UFC 149 against Eric Koch (Main Event title defense)
• Domick Cruz out of UFC 148 against Urijah Faber (Co-Main Title Defense/TUF Coaches Fight)

All of these inuries has also caused fights and fighter to move from one PPV to another. The main changes are:

• Urijah Faber/Renan Barao Interim Title Defense moves from UFC 148 to UFC 149
• Rich Franklin to fight Wanderlei Silva at UFC 147 instead of Cung Le at UFC 148
• Cung Le to fight Patrick Cote at UFC 148 instead of Rich Franklin
• Brandon Vera to fight Shogun and main event UFC on Fox 4 instead of fighting on UFC on Fuel against James Te-Huna
• Shogun moves from UFC 148 to UFC on Fox 4
• Hector Lombard moves from main event of UFC on Fox 4 against Stann to fighting Tim Boetsch on UFC 149

Think you've got that all down? 

Dana White always says when he wakes up in the morning he doesn't know what kind of bad shit is going to happen, and the past month has been one catastrophe after another for the UFC Boss. If Chael Sonnen or Anderson Silva get injured, pray for his health.

UFC fans are getting past the breaking point of dealing with fighter injuries. On popular MMA message board The UG, fans that bought tickets to these events are thinking about boycotting buying tickets to UFC events until its closer to the day of the fight. This is understandable, because I wouldn't want to buy $500 tickets to see three good fights, and then see two of the fights moved or canceled. 

The biggest problem with this is that there is no solution to the problem. MMA is a physical sport, and you need to spar to prepare for a fight. It's just when the injuries effect the main or co-main of an event that it really hurts the UFC. Add all that on top of Brock Lesnar's retirement (for now) and GSP's year long recovery from a torn ACL (the sports two biggest draws) and Alistair Overeem's failed drug test, and you can see why Dana and Lorenzo might be in an extra bad mood as of late.