It was one of those nights.

A night, when the predictable rubbed shoulders with the seemingly impossible, and when Manny Pacquiao topped it all off with a display of the sublime and peerless.

Who would have predicted when the night began that Steven Luevano and Mario Santiago would put on the fight of the night, or that Francisco Lorenzo would spend several interminable minutes lying on his back, bleeding on the canvas, until the referee and several officials decided that he was, all appearances to the contrary, the winner? Tye Fields demonstrating conclusively that he is not, in fact, the future of the heavyweight division was less shocking, although the fact that Monte Barrett should be the one to expose that fact so ruthlessly, was perhaps not so expected.

Then again, a few hundred miles away, the Los Angeles Dodgers were winning a game in which they failed to get a hit in.

Like I said, it was one of those nights.

For that matter, it had been one of those weeks, in which discussion of the main event between Pacquiao and David Diaz fought for space with manufactured talk of a curse and the stage-managed appearance of a goat, which stood in front of media members before urinating copiously on the floor.

At the end of the day, however, what matters is the boxing, and by the time the week and the night were over, we were all reminded once again just how compelling the sport can be at its very highest levels.

With Floyd Mayweather's retirement, Pacquiao gained recognition on most people's lists as the No. 1 fighter, pound-for-pound, in the world. With the kind of performance he turned in against Diaz on Saturday, he might have soon enough seized that hypothetical crown all by himself, even if the Pretty Boy had not elected to walk away.

Granted, styles make fights, and the style of Diaz was tailor-made to make Pacquiao look good. Diaz was there to be hit. He was the slower guy with an all-too-penetrable defense. But he was the defending champion, a man with a sturdy chin and endless stamina, who was at least expected to make Pacquiao work hard for his win. Instead, he was totally overmatched and outclassed from the first bell to the moment referee Vic Drakulich waved off the bout and a concerned Pacquiao grabbed his fallen opponent's arm and attempted to help him off the canvas.

The shocking suddenness of the knockout appeared to surprise and even concern Pacquiao; but while the end was abrupt, it was but the punctuation to eight-and-a-half rounds of utter dominance that served to elevate an already exceptional fighter to newly stratospheric heights. Pacquiao demonstrated the relentless aggression for which he has long been famed, combined it with the power that, against counter-punchers like Marco Antonio Barrera and Juan Manuel Marquez, he has not of late been quite so able to display, and added in fast footwork and ring generalship of a quality he had not previously hinted at possessing. It was, as Pacquiao trainer Freddie Roach marveled at the post-fight news conference, the best performance of his fighter's career -- which, after 52 fights and multiple world titles over 13 years, was high praise indeed.

 

And yet, phenomenal as Pacquiao had been on Saturday, the sense was that he could still be better, that all we have seen to this point has been but a prelude to what is yet to come.

After years of climbing through the weight limits, his ever-expanding body struggling to cope with the constraints of each consecutive division, he finally seems to have found a weight at which he is truly comfortable. Liberated from having to fight the scales, he is free now to focus on fighting the opponents in front of him, and he seems certain to do so with greater power and increased skill and versatility.

Pacquiao began the evening as the No. 1 pound-for-pound fighter in the world. He ended it with the world at his feet, with the look of a young man who finally finished his apprenticeship and was ready to embark on his life's work.

It was an impressive transformation for a fighter who was already so accomplished.

But then, it was one of those nights.

Kieran Mulvaney covers boxing for ESPN.com, Reuters and Boxinginlasvegas.com.