Memories can produce untrustworthy flashes of the past and the memories of sports fans often exist as disjointed strands of pain and joy forcing us to remember and forget merely out of service to our own emotions. Unlike other sports, boxing does not rely upon the same meticulous examination of statistics. It’s not a numbers games the same that way baseball, basketball and football are.
What happens inside the ring is more anecdotal, a bloody story retold over and over again until the memory becomes a fragmented version of its original narrative.
Since and including his fight with Oscar De La Hoya, Manny Pacquiao has knocked exactly one of his opponents out cold. Each and every other win, save for his clash with Miguel Cotto in 2009, has gone the distance. His beat-down of Antonio Margarito, his one-sided battering of Joshua Clottey, and his fights with Mosley, Rios and Bradley all went 12 rounds.
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