At least one favorite plays to form

LAS VEGAS -- After USC and UCLA lost on Choke Saturday in Los Angeles college football, the odds seemed to be that the Manny Pacquiao-Marco Antonio Barrera fight would be won by a ring girl.

One of the tall blondes had a good first step, after all.

If boxing were to be bitten by the Oct. 6 West Coast sports weirdness bug, somebody would have flown into the ring in a kite powered by a fan. Fortunately, there is a roof on the Mandalay Bay Events Center.

But boxing didn’t stray from the form sheet. No black cats in Pacquiao’s path to the ring.

He won a unanimous decision, sufficiently exciting a crowd of 10,112 in the 12,000-seat arena to justify the ticket prices by chasing a shot-and-aging Barrera all night.

Two of the judges had it 118-109, which in boxing scoring translates to a rout.

Pacquiao, the pride of the Philippines, only furthered his star status with an effort, all the way through the final round, that showed he was willing to go all out. Many boxers, knowing how far ahead they were, would have danced and dodged the last two or three rounds.

Afterward, Pacquiao said he wanted to give the fans a good show, no matter what.

Perhaps Pete Carroll and Karl Dorrell might be looking for a game consultant.

It wasn’t a title fight, not that that mattered to anybody. It was listed as a WBC International super-featherweight (130 pounds) contest, but that only meant somebody had to label it so they could fight 12 rounds instead of 10.

Pacquiao leaped into the spotlight Nov. 15, 2003, when he beat Barrera in San Antonio. That was his coming-out party, his sign that he was soon to become the finest fighter in his division, which is clear now.

For Barrera at that time, the defeat was a shocker, and he has wanted a rematch ever since. But here, almost four years later, just three months from his 34th birthday, and in his 69th professional fight, it was too late.

Barrera, one of the fighters Mexico has been most proud of in its history of great fighters, said that this was his last fight. With most fighters, that means they’ll have only five or six more. Here’s hoping that Barrera, who has fought 12 times since having small plates surgically placed in his skull in 1997, will see what everybody else saw here Saturday night.

Pacquiao is dominant sheriff in the division, and at 28 seems ready to stay there for a while.

From the start, Pacquiao moved better, looked better, was the aggressor and was easily able to take whatever Barrera handed out, which wasn’t much.

The most action occurred in the 11th round, when Pacquiao caught Barrera with a devastating combination that appeared to open a cut under Barrera’s right eye (Barrera said afterward that was caused by a head butt). Shortly after that, Barrera caught Pacquiao out of a clinch and referee Tony Weeks called a timeout as Pacquiao wobbled a little bit in his corner and the fans booed.

But Pacquiao recovered quickly and went back to work on the fighter once known as the “Baby Face Assassin.” When it was over, Barrera was neither baby-faced, nor an assassin.

In the semi-main event, a WBO featherweight title fight, Steve Luevano of La Puente and Antonio Davis of Atlanta pawed at each other for the first half of the fight before Luevano opened a cut over Davis’ eye and had him out on his feet most of the final three rounds.

Then, a woman in a black cocktail dress sang the Mexican national anthem, a woman in a white evening gown with red and blue trim sang the Philippine national anthem and a woman in a black pants suit with cuffs rolled up at the knees to make room for black knee boots sang the U.S. national anthem.

Worse, Bernard Hopkins was in the ring; if anybody had handed him the microphone, the fight might never have started.

When they evening ended, there was one irony. Among those having the most success in fights around the world in Pacquiao’s weight class is Edwin Valero, who is 22-0, including 19 knockouts in the first round. But he hasn’t fought in the United States since 2003 because he had a motorcycle wreck that prompted surgery on his head. An MRI test showed a spot and he has not been allowed to box in the States since.

Unlike Barrera, he has no metal plates.

--

Bill Dwyre can be reached at bill.dwyre@latimes.com. To read previous columns by Dwyre, go to latimes.com/dwyre.