Jessie Vargas: 'I apologize if I let you down' in loss to Manny Pacquiao
LAS VEGAS -- Jessie Vargas wanted it so badly Saturday night that it hurt. Literally.
Badly enough that he could think of nothing else day and night, he claimed, leading up to the fight of his life against legendary Filipino superstar Manny Pacquiao.
This was the singular moment Vargas had waited for, oh, 27 years or so.
And inside of an hour at the Thomas & Mack Center, in Vargas’ hometown no less, before more than 16,000 mostly Pacman fans who chanted themselves into a frenzy, it was gone.
It was gone because Vargas (27-2, 10 KOs) simply ran into a 5-6 buzzsaw who looked nothing like the 37-year-old man who spent the preparation for this fight working as a senator in the Philippines by day and often training late into the night. Whatever he did, it was the right thing.
Vargas gave it all he had, which would have been enough to destroy most fighters. But Manny Pacquiao is not most fighters. The eight-division champion who came out of retirement for this fight won a unanimous decision and took back the WBO welterweight belt he once owned.
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“Fighting Manny Pacquiao is like playing a very fast game of chess,” Vargas said. “He was very fast and sharp. You have to be alert at all times and on your toes. There was a lot of incoming.”
Dewey Cooper, the trainer who helped turn Vargas from a light-hitting boxer to a bigger, stronger puncher, told everyone who would listen this week that Vargas, a decade younger than Pacquiao, would pull off the huge upset befitting a 7-1 underdog.
Vargas thought if he could catch Pacquiao (59-6-2, 38 KOs) with a big right hand, much the way Juan Manuel Marquez did four years ago with a counterpunch that knocked Pacquiao silly, he could take him. But the junior senator never took the bait.
“He wasn’t being as offensive as he usually is,” Vargas said. “And I was hoping we could make it a bit of a brawl. I tried, but it was a chess match in there. We were both trying to land big shots.”
Afterward, the usually blunt Cooper said the right things.
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“Let’s give credit to Pacquiao and his legendary accomplishments,” Cooper said. “He’s a great champion.”
Vargas, who came in with a substantial height and reach advantage, was flash-knocked down in the third round and later cut around his right eye. Pacquiao’s lightning speed, he said, had everything to do with that.
“He has tremendous speed, and sometimes you get caught with those quick shots you don’t see and it knocks you down,” Vargas said. “We are only improving. I apologize if I let you down, but I tried my best, and we are only getting better. Fighting Pacquiao only elevated my game, and it makes me better.”
Losing the belt, well, “it hurts, man,” said Vargas, who was headed to the hospital to get his right eye examined, and might well have run into his vanquisher, who was there getting 16 stitches in his face for a cut nobody knew had even happened and who never showed up for the press conference.
“But it was a good fight. I’m happy the fans enjoyed it, and now my objective is to recapture another world title. We’re going to go back to the drawing board and see what we can correct. But at the end of the day, we fought Manny Pacquiao in a chess match, we did well and what doesn’t kill us will make us stronger.”