By Manuel Perez: I don’t know what the producers of the HBO Mayweather-Marquez 24/7 series were thinking when they put together the first episode, but they need to do some planning to try to liven things up. The reality show was flat out boring and painful to watch. I mean, it wasn’t nearly as boring at watching the Hatton-Pacquiao 24/7 episodes, because that was all time bad television as far as I’m concerned. But last Saturday night’s Mayweather-Marquez 24/7 was approaching the Hatton-Pacquiao series in the boredom department.
It looks as if Mayweather is trying to remake his image to try and come across as a nice guy that cares about people. It seemed like a big put on to me and really feigned. Mayweather went out and gave a bunch of good to some homeless people. I think that’s admirable, but I never heard about Mayweather doing this before and I can’t help thinking he did this just to come look good on the special.
I’d be curious to know how long Mayweather has been doing this. Then there was Mayweather going to the roller skate rink with his kids, which seemed like another big photo op to stage him in a good light. What it had to do with boxing, I have no idea. I’m wondering what the thinking was behind that move.
I don’t think that by people seeing Mayweather come across as a nice guy at a roller skate rink that they’re going to want to dial up their cable company and order the Mayweather-Marquez bout. If anything, I can see the opposite effect. That was just boring television. Mayweather would have been much better off if he came across as his usual self and did something interesting like insulting Marquez for the entire show. I could really respect that, because it’s real.
The way Mayweather came across on the show seemed to be too contrived, as if he’s gone out to change people’s minds about him. One of the reasons why people pay attention to Mayweather is because he talks so much trash. If you take that away from him, he’s just like another fighter.
Trying to show Mayweather as family man with his kids and his father is not the answer to selling the Mayweather-Marquez fight to the public. The answer to that is to have Mayweather ripping Marquez to pieces, insulting him and trying to get at him anyway possible.
You can’t have two fighters both playing the nice guy. This fight isn’t drawing much attention as it is, even though Marquez is probably the best fighter in boxing by far. The public has failed to get excited about the fight because Marquez is moving up two divisions to take the fight against Mayweather. They just assume Marquez is going to lose the fight, so they don’t want to see the fight.
That means Mayweather, the better talker, needs to be larger than life. This family stuff isn’t the answer to selling this fight. The HBO crew are really dropping the ball on this. There’s got to be more anger, more hatred, and more cunning. I don’t see any of that and this is just bad television.
The only thing interesting in the entire Mayweather-Marquez episode was when Marquez was being trained and he gave a few sound bites. There wasn’t enough of Marquez and Mayweather was a big put off by the way he looked like he was begging to be liked by the public. I didn’t like him, no matter how hard he seemed to be trying to be a nice. I was just flat bored by him. If HBO put me as the director/producer of this show, I’d get some real emotion out of these wooden fighters. We need some drama here.
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