LAS VEGAS – On Feb. 20, boxing journalists
around the world celebrated. That was the day Floyd Mayweather Jr. signed a
contract to face Manny Pacquiao in a welterweight title fight.
More importantly from the journalists’
standpoint, it meant an end to six years of being asked if the fight would ever
happen.
Everyone celebrated when it was made and veteran, hard-boiled reporters were almost giddy. They’d have the opportunity to cover the modern-day Ali-Frazier or Louis-Schmeling, a historic event that attracted worldwide attention. With the bout four months past, it hardly seems like a historic event now, and the competition in the ring didn’t come close to justifying the enormous hype that preceded it.
Mayweather is days away from what he says is the final fight of his career when he meets Andre Berto on Saturday in a welterweight title fight at the MGM, and it seems the sport would be far better off had the Mayweather-Pacquiao bout not occurred.
Oh, you can bet Mayweather and Pacquiao are happy it occurred. Combined, they took home around $350 million for their one night of work.
Much of the pre-fight theme was about how good it was for boxing that the fight was finally made.
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And all the fight had to do was live up, in even a small way, to its billing.
It did not, of course. It was a dull, non-competitive fight that Mayweather won handily. He boxed superbly and Pacquiao was not at all the dynamo he promised to be.
Post-fight, news leaked that Pacquiao had fought with a torn rotator cuff in his right shoulder that severely limited him.
Mayweather, who made more than $250 million for the night, did what he had to do and nothing more. Pacquiao wasn’t capable of pressuring him and that was fine with Mayweather. He glided around the ring, flicking jabs, making Pacquiao miss badly, and won in his typical defense-first style.
Many fans were outraged when learning of
Pacquiao’s injury after the fact. Lawsuits were filed and there is a good chance
it will gain class-action status.
Pacquiao said he re-injured his shoulder
in the fourth round, which is when he hurt Mayweather and seemed he might be
able to turn it into a fight.
But what was astonishing was that Pacquiao
didn’t fight with a sense of urgency in the first three rounds. He knew about
his shoulder when the rest of us did not, and he had to wonder how long it could
last.
Given that, it would have made sense for him to storm out of the corner and
instantly go on the attack. He needed to pressure Mayweather and make him work.
Instead, Pacquiao tried to box with arguably the greatest boxer of his
generation and he was highly unsuccessful.But Mayweather didn’t step up his game to meet the occasion. True, he won easily, and in some minds, that’s the only thing that matters. But had he stepped it up and gone after Pacquiao more and tried to hurt him, the kind of fight people had hoped to see might have materialized. It did not, and the bout was almost universally panned.
And that brings us to the grand finale of Mayweather’s career. When icons from other sports retire, it’s a grand spectacle. Yankees shortstop Derek Jeter announced his retirement at the beginning of the 2014 season, and it soon became “The Year of Jeter” with celebrations in every ballpark.
Imagine if Kobe Bryant were to play his final game Saturday. The media alone would probably fill multiple sections at the cavernous Staples Center.
But Mayweather, one of the greats in the history of his sport and clearly the best fighter of his generation, is heading into retirement on Saturday and it doesn’t seem that too many people care.
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Thousands of tickets remain available, although Mayweather Promotions CEO Leonard Ellerbe dismissed that on Tuesday by noting that the fight would produce an eight-figure gate.
Perhaps, but that money isn’t being paid by fans. That’s obvious.
Berto doesn’t bring much to the table and has done little in his career to earn a shot at the world’s No. 1 pound-for-pound fighter.
This, though, isn’t on Berto. Had the Mayweather-Pacquiao fight been even reasonably entertaining, the reaction to the Berto fight would have been dramatically different. Berto has been an action fighter throughout his career and had there not been the stench that was created in the aftermath of Mayweather-Pacquiao, his choice as an opponent would not have been as much of a story as it is.
The sad truth is that instead of a celebration of boxing, the Mayweather-Pacquiao fight was obviously a money grab.
Fans were charged to go to the weigh-in, even if proceeds benefited charity. Ticket prices were at an all-time high. The pay-per-view price was at an all-time high. Hotels jacked their room rates way up and out of proportion in order to cash in on super-fight fever.
And in everyone’s desire to get rich, they forgot they needed to deliver a quality product.
The undercard absolutely stunk. They provided two non-competitive fights on the pay-per-view portion of the undercard that all boxing journalists knew would be horrible.
On a night when promoters knew there would be record revenues, they spent next-to-nothing on the undercard.
Pacquiao, after chasing Mayweather for years, fought like a content rich guy who’d finally gotten the massive payday he wanted. He didn’t have the fervor or the passion he’d shown in bouts against Juan Manuel Marquez, Oscar De La Hoya, Miguel Cotto, Ricky Hatton or Antonio Margarito.
Pacquiao, who was supposed to be the offensive fighter, threw fewer punches than Mayweather (435-429), according to CompuBox, and landed a ridiculously low 81 shots. By way of comparison, Pacquiao landed 474 punches out of 1,069 thrown in his 2010 win over Margarito.
Mayweather, though, didn’t put the foot on the accelerator and try to hurt Pacquiao. He stuck to the game plan, even as his father/trainer, Floyd Sr., urged him in the corner to throw punches.
Mayweather wasn’t going to take a risk, even on a night when he’d be handed a $100 million check after leaving the ring.
The fans have remembered all of that. They clearly aren’t happy about it. And it appears they’re staying away.
Mayweather doesn’t seem to mind. Several times, when reporters have complained about his choice of Berto and noted that fans aren’t happy, he responded by saying if anyone doesn’t like the fight, they shouldn’t buy it.
Confronted Tuesday with evidence that the fight was lagging far, far, far behind his other recent fights in terms of ticket sales, he essentially shrugged.
“I’m just going to keep my fingers crossed and hope for the best,” he said.
Fans thought they were getting the best in
May, when Mayweather and Pacquiao finally met after six years of pleading.
As it stands now, though, it would have
been far better had that fight never occurred.
The bad taste that exists in the mouths of
so many fans who feel they were cheated and taken advantage of wouldn’t exist if
the so-called Fight of the Century hadn’t occurred.
We all felt like winners when it was
announced.
We were losers, though, when the final
bell rang. And the losses continue to mount.
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