No Holds Barred: Chris Baldwin on the Mayweather-Pacquiao Debacle

On this edition of No Holds Barred, host Eddie Goldman spoke with trainer and fight manager Chris Baldwin.

Based in Los Angeles, she is the head trainer at Baldwin Rocks Fitness.

She was also in Las Vegas to watch the Floyd Mayweather-Manny Pacquiao fight on May 2, won by Mayweather by a clear-cut unanimous decision, and had a lot to say about it.

We spoke with Chris Baldwin by phone Wednesday.

For the first few rounds, she said, "Floyd came out and did what people thought he wasn't going to do. He stood in front of Manny and shot jabs at him. He pretty much controlled the center of the ring. And Manny for some odd reason wasn't his normal typical, bouncy, let-me-throw-a-thousand-punches-in-a-fight."

Pacquiao's uncharacteristic lack of effective offense, however, was likely not due to a shoulder injury which after the fight he blamed for his performance, she argued.

"Not once did I hear Manny complain about his shoulder. Not once did I hear [trainer] Freddie [Roach] ask Manny about his shoulder. So that to me was kind of an indication that maybe there wasn't really an injury and that they're just saying this stuff now," she said.

"They make themselves look bad to even say one, you're a sore loser, you didn't congratulate Floyd that he beat you fair and square, I thought. You said you won the fight. And now the excuse is, 'I have this shoulder injury.'"

And, she noted, "Now your integrity is shot. You have no honor. Everything is done for the love of money. To me, it's just a sad, pathetic case."

She also knows quite a bit about Pacquiao and Roach, as for two years she had trained fighters at Roach's Wild Card Gym, and when Pacquiao was training there as well.

We discussed why this fight should have been postponed had Pacquiao really had a serious shoulder injury, her experiences training fighters, how her "passion is boxing", domestic violence and combat sports, the issues of concussions and head trauma, her varied martial arts background, police murders and brutality against Black people, and much, much more.

You can play or download No Holds Barred here and here. If one link doesn't work, please try another.

No Holds Barred is also available on mobile phones and iPads through Stitcher.

Also, No Holds Barred is available through iTunes.

The No Holds Barred theme song is called "The Heist", which is also available on iTunes by composer Ian Snow.

No Holds Barred is free to listen to and is sponsored by:

American Top Team. Whether you're a beginner or a champion, train with the champions in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, boxing, wrestling, grappling, and mixed martial arts at American Top Team. Check out their web site at AmericanTopTeam.com.

Defense Soap, an effective, deep penetrating body soap with natural antifungal, antiviral, and antibacterial soap ingredients. Defense Soap is the best cleansing body soap for men and women athletes who are involved in contact sports such as MMA, wrestling, grappling, jiu-jitsu, and judo, to help their antifungal, anti-ringworm, anti-jock itch strategy. Check out their web site, at DefenseSoap.com.

No Holds Barred: Charles Farrell on Mayweather-Pacquiao and the Black Code of Fighting

(Photo of Floyd Mayweather vs. Manny Pacquiao by Esther Lin/Showtime)

On this edition of No Holds Barred, host Eddie Goldman once again spoke with our colleague, correspondent, and award-winning boxing writer, Charles Farrell.

He is also co-editor of The Boxing Standard.

We spoke with him by phone Sunday.

Our kickoff, of course, was Saturday's mega-fight, where Floyd Mayweather outpointed and outboxed Manny Pacquiao to win a deserved unanimous decision by scores of 118-110 and 116-112 twice. Mayweather, now the holder of three major welterweight belts, increases his record to 48-0 with 26 KOs, while Pacquiao falls to 57-6-2 with 38 KOs.

Besides evaluating Mayweather's successful neutralizing of Pacquiao's offense and his greater accuracy and volume of punches landed in this fight, we discussed the art of boxing and how Mayweather's performance measured up in this category.

While Charles Farrell said he is "a real advocate of art in boxing," he added that Mayweather "fell short of art" while having a "highly efficient performance." He also said his favorite fighter today is the super bantamweight champion Guillermo Rigondeaux of Cuba, whom he called a "supreme artist."

We refuted those who claimed that this fight showed that "boxing is dead" because it was not a bloody brawl with multiple knockdowns ending in one fighter sprawled on the mat.

This fight was a prime example of what Charles Farrell calls the "Black code of fighting". He explained this in depth in his recent pre-fight article "Why Floyd Mayweather Is The Last Of A Kind".

Black code fighting is, he said, "a style that Black fighters developed starting around the turn of the twentieth century. It hit its heyday probably from the 1930s right through the 1950s. And this is a style that Black fighters developed among themselves to keep themselves healthy, to not get hurt, to be able to stay busy because they had to fight a lot to make a living. So it was a style based on efficiency, tremendous defensive skill, the ability to set traps, to lure people into situations where they couldn't do their work. It's a very subtle style."

In it, "You don't do much."

And he said, "In many ways, Floyd Mayweather is just about the last of a long line of fighters who are really proficient at it. And what we saw last night was a good example of that style of fighting."

We also discussed Pacquiao's post-fight excuses about having an injury; his absurd claim that he won the fight; how the many technical problems with the pay-per-view telecast along with the emergence of many streaming video apps will further weaken boxing's pay-per-view model; what may be next for Mayweather in what he says will be the final fight of his career; and much, much more.

You can play or download No Holds Barred here and here. If one link doesn't work, please try another.

No Holds Barred is also available on mobile phones and iPads through Stitcher.

Also, No Holds Barred is available through iTunes.

The No Holds Barred theme song is called "The Heist", which is also available on iTunes by composer Ian Snow.

No Holds Barred is free to listen to and is sponsored by:

American Top Team. Whether you're a beginner or a champion, train with the champions in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, boxing, wrestling, grappling, and mixed martial arts at American Top Team. Check out their web site at AmericanTopTeam.com.

Defense Soap, an effective, deep penetrating body soap with natural antifungal, antiviral, and antibacterial soap ingredients. Defense Soap is the best cleansing body soap for men and women athletes who are involved in contact sports such as MMA, wrestling, grappling, jiu-jitsu, and judo, to help their antifungal, anti-ringworm, anti-jock itch strategy. Check out their web site, at DefenseSoap.com.