By Dave Lahr: After watching today’s press conference at the Dallas Cowboy stadium, I have to say that this was one of the most boring press conferences I’ve ever seen before. With a huge stadium and all the build up for this March 13th fight, this was a really boring press conference. Jerry Jones, the Dallas Cowboy owner gave a long winded speech following by an introduction of some old boxers and football players to start things off.

After that, they brought out a pack of cheerleaders who went into a dance routine behind some canned music. Finally, when that was over Pacquiao’s trainer Freddie Roach came out and made a brief speech saying “This is the Super bowl of boxing. It’s going to be a great fight.” I thought he would say more than that, but Roach seemed to be a big hurry to get off the stage for some reason.

Clottey came out next behind a fog that rolled around him as he came out of tunnel. Clottey just appeared thankful about getting the opportunity to be there. It seemed really weird, like he had won a lottery or something by getting the chance to fight Pacquiao. Instead of saying what he was going to do to Pacquiao in the ring, Clottey said “I want to think Manny Pacquiao and Freddie Roach for giving me the opportunity. This is going to be a great fight. I can’t think Manny Pacquiao enough. He’s the best guy. This fight is going to be a hell of a fight. I love Manny Pacquiao. He’s one of my favorite fighters. If you throw at him, he throws back at you. It’s not going to be an easy fight. I’m going to change some things in my training. I’m going to get me trainer to start preparing me. I already started my training. I know I’ve got to fight Manny Pacquiao. It’s not going to be easy. The two of us are going to give the fans a great fight. It’s going to be a nice fight.”

It was kind of a letdown listening to Clottey speak, because he seemed just happy to be there. I would have liked to have seen a little more fire from him about how he was going to beat up Pacquiao, and not all this niceties coming from him. When it came to Pacquiao’s turn to speak, he came out giggling and smiling, saying “I feel like a football player. Clottey is a good fighter and a top fighter. He is bigger than me, so I have to prepare hard for this fight and train hard for this fight. We will do our best to give a good fight and make people happy on March 13th.”

After that, Clottey and Pacquiao stood face to face for a brief stare down. Clottey was all smiles. They then put on Dallas Cowboy football jerseys and spent the rest of the time posing for pictures with Jerry Jones and the Dallas Cowboy cheerleaders. Overall, it was pretty boring for me to watch it. The fighter seemed to lack any aggression towards each other and all the ‘thanks you’s’ and compliments was frankly nauseating to me. Where was the trash talking?

I would have liked to have seen Clottey give some menacing stares at Pacquiao and maybe get face to face and lean on him to see what he would do. They needed to bring some animosity and tension to the press conference. I couldn’t stand watching them smile all the time and say nothing but nice stuff.

The stadium was almost entirely empty except for a couple dozen sports writers, the Dallas Cowboy cheerleaders and the fighters’ teams. With all the fuss that has been made about the Pacquiao-Clottey fight by some people, I expected there to be a better turn out than this. I hope this isn’t going to be the case for the fight. It would look bad if they had this huge stadium and only 10,000 boxing fans show up.