By Allan Fox: One question that many people have right now about last Saturday’s Floyd Mayweather Jr. vs. Manny Pacquiao fight was why Pacquiao chose to fight Mayweather with a preexisting injury to his right shoulder. Boxing fans don’t understand that move, as they had to pay big money to see the fight on PPV and live.
By Pacquiao fighting with a serious shoulder injury, he failed to give the fans their money’s worth. At the same time Pacquiao likely hurt his own legacy because this could be the only chance he’ll ever get to fight Mayweather.
If Mayweather and Pacquiao were to announce a rematch between them in the future, it’s quite likely that fans would stay away in droves. They would have to drop the price dramatically to interest the casual boxing fans and even then it would be difficult to sell the fight due to the bad press that last Saturday’s “Fight of the Century” has received.
Earlier on Monday, it was revealed that the 36-year-old Pacquiao will be undergoing shoulder surgery this week to have an operation on his right rotator cuff in his shoulder where there was a “significant tear” discovered after an MRI was done. The injury didn’t take place in the Mayweather fight, however. The injury occurred last April, according to Pacquiao’s personal adviser Michael Koncz.
With the revelation that Pacquiao had a preexisting injury before the Mayweather fight, instead of it making boxing fans feel sorry for Pacquiao and feel that he would have given a better job had he been healthy, it’s angered fans for him having fought with a bad injury like this. With the money that the fans paid out to see the fight, they expected both fighters to come into the bout injury free rather than them coming into the fight badly hurt.
One could understand if a fighter just failed to have a good night, or if they were outclassed in the ring. But for Pacquiao to come into the ring with an injury to his shoulder as bad as the one he had, it strikes some fans as a case of greed. They think that Pacquiao didn’t feel that he could win the fight, but instead still went ahead with it due to the huge money that he was getting. With the potential of making $100+ million for the Mayweather, Pacquiao would have had a delay in getting that money if he’d postponed the fight. You can understand then why some boxing fans feel that Pacquiao went ahead with the fight just so that he could get the paycheck, because they don’t believe for a second that he felt he could beat Mayweather one-handed.
What’s interesting here is that Pacquiao’s trainer Freddie Roach recently said that he felt Pacquiao could beat Mayweather one-handed with one of his arms tied behind his back. Did Roach know even then that Pacquiao wouldn’t have full use of his right hand for the fight? If so, it looks bad because it makes Roach seem disingenuous.
Pacquiao was hoping to get a shot of an anti-inflammatory drug before the fight with Mayweather, but the Nevada State Athletic Commission rejected the use of the drug. The question is did Pacquiao assume that the drug would be allowed and that’s why he went ahead with the fight? The Nevada Commission’s head guy Francisco Aguilar said they didn’t know about the injury to Pacquiao’s shoulder until 2 ½ hours before the fight. Had he known about it a day earlier during the weigh-in, he might have said yes to him being able to use the anti-inflammatory drug. However, even if Pacquiao did use it there’s no telling whether it would have made any difference in the fight. If Pacquiao was fighting with a tear in his right rotator cuff, the chances are that the problem would have surfaced no matter what drug he used to prevent the pain from occurring.
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