MIAMI – It’s easy. Jean Pascal will fight at Place Bell on March 16th. If advertising and marketing goes well, it will be maybe 4,000 viewers. How many will have paid for their tickets is impossible to know.
But what Jean Pascal deserves for a return to Quebec is 20,000 fans at the Bell Centre. Come to pay tribute to an exceptional career.
I remember Pascal’s “retirement fight” in Miami against Ahmed Elbiali. I was with Jean-Charles Lajoie who was working on the biography of Jean Pascal. We thought Pascal deserved to have his last fight in Montreal in a packed Bell Center. Not to end it in a potato field in Miami’s Cuban Quarter. Even when we were with Bob Hartley and Michel Therrien.
And then the next fight was the clowning against Steve Bossé in Laval.
Jean-Charles could have written the last chapter that evening.
BIVOL, JACK, BROWNE
All were wrong. And royal. Since Steve Bossé, proud senior league fighter, Pascal faced Dmitry Bivol, world champion who just beat Canelo Alvarez, then beat Marcus Browne to become WBA world champion again and offered himself to Badou Jack in Atlanta by playing Fanlong Meng as Dessert at Tampa Tapped Bay on May 20, 2022.
Want a totally stupid statistic? Boxrec Five Star fights are rare. Very hard to earn. For example, Lucian Bute was awarded a Five Star once in his career. During his fight against Carl Froch in Nottingham which ended in carnage.
David Lemieux fought twice in a Five Star. His World Championship fights against Billy Jo Saunders and Gennady Golovkin.
And John Pascal? How many five stars?
Ten. TEN 10. X. TEN. SAY. DIECI. Pascal, that devil of a man who wasn’t always smart enough, was entitled to ten fights classified five stars by Boxrec. It starts with Carl Froch in England, it goes through Chad Dawson, Bernard Hopkins, Eleider Alvarez, Dmitry Bivol, Marcus Browne, Badou Jack… and it doesn’t even include Fanlong Meng, a four star hotel, or Adrian Diaconu and Lucian Aber , four stars.
Adonis Stevenson has received four awards and Artur Beterbiev has been awarded three Five Stars.
It’s crazy bold. And Jean Pascal, as interested as he was in statistics, was not aware of it.
The fight against Michael Eifert is a two star fight. And people feel it.
VICTIM OF HIS OWN SUCCESS
Jean Pascal’s manager is very clear when speaking about this fight: “We didn’t choose Michael Eifert. It was the IBF that imposed it. This is the necessary passage to be entitled to a championship fight against the IBF title holder. It is currently Artur Beterbiev. If Michael Eifert is not easy to sell, I agree, Beterbiev or another will be much more. Jean knows it and he’s ready,” Leon explained to me yesterday at noon.
Pascal has enough experience and experience to be aware that anything can happen in boxing. Michael Eifert was not penalized by the IBF because it was overcooked spaghetti. A slap can change the face of a fight at any time. Ask Marcus Browne who dominated his fight against Pascal before he was linked by a right from JiC’s bio.
“I am also a victim of my career. Previously, Quebecers were content with local champions. Ouellette versus Hilton is a good example. Then Lucian Bute popularized international fights, but against good class B boxers. I brought the true elite to Quebec. Sergei Kovalev, Chad Dawson, Bernard Hopkins. I met a bunch of great world champions like Badou Jack, Dmitry Bivol or Carl Froch. I also fought against world champions like Eleider Alvarez and Lucian Bute. Nine of my last eleven fights have involved an undefeated boxer. It’s not cake,” says Pascal.
His conclusion: “It’s normal to be less impressed when you talk about Michael Eifert.”
SKIP YOUR TURN
And there’s more. Pascal was involved in a nasty doping story. He then had verbal altercations with Montreal police.
But most importantly, there was a pandemic that tied eight million Quebecers to their big 4K TV, they got a taste. And post-PKU, predictably, we’ve been met with a horrible burst of inflation, leaving people home before a noodle or rice dish because the meat is overpriced. People are still in shock when they come home from the grocery store or when they’ve paid their rent.
Faced with $100 in Laval on a Thursday night, the easy fix is to tell yourself they’re going to skip their draw while they wait for something better.
But it’s still boring…
Don’t take out the tissues
Jonathan Quick was traded by the Los Angeles Kings to the Columbus Blue Jackets. It’s part of the hockey business. When you sign a ten-year deal with an organization like the Kings without asking for a no-trade clause, it means your advisor misjudged the situation.
Or that the kings added a few million to get rid of that clause.
Quick was a great player for the Kings. His family was happy in LA, I hope so. The schools were good and the teachers nice.
The business
The school, the private tutors, the Mercedes, the fame and the 57 million, that’s fabulous.
It’s business. So if you are traded, don’t cry. It’s boring for the kids, for the lady, for friends and relatives. But that’s business.
A good nurse or a good nurse makes 2.6 million in 40 years from flaring and nursing.
Who yells at them when they switch hospitals or complain about forced overtime?
