By Matthias Predonzan: I admit, with no problem, that when I first heard about the Floyd Mayweather Jr. vs. Conor McGregor’s fight, it sounded to me like a joke. Maybe because it is a joke, meaning something not real, something whom purpose is different from what it appears to be.
No point to articulate here, what we are listening since when the fight was announced:
It is a fact that it is only an exhibition, a giant business in which the huge notoriety of the two contenders is the lure to get people to buy and watch the match.
But this is only part of the story, because for many reasons this fight/show/scam – call it like you want – is strongly bounded with another boxing event, the fight between Saul “Canelo” Alvarez and Gennady “GGG” Golovkin.
The fight that all the fans were waiting for; left to marinate, until the best moment, to attract as many fans as possible to buy it (and possibly for some other reason too.)
Another ground why this last fight was meant to be a successful event was that finally Floyd Mayweather Jr., the Pay Per View king of boxing retired and in the words of Canelo’s promoter, Oscar De La Hoya, this retirement was a great news for boxing.
De La Hoya doesn’t like Floyd at all. Floyd was the one that not only defeated him in a boxing ring, was the one who took the crown of the most paid boxer and PPV king from Oscar head.
Furthermore, Floyd was the one taking the Mexican festivity dates from the calendar, for his own fights, obliterating not only Oscar’s but also Oscar’s best fighter – Saul Alvarez – image.
At the beginning Oscar was adamant saying that Canelo vs. GGG was a real fight and Mayweather vs. McGregor just a show but then probably he was getting nervous and insecure and he went too far saying that Canelo vs GGG will be the best fight in middleweight history, better that Thomas Hearns vs. Marvin Hagler and Hearns vs. Roberto Duran.
I think this was a big mistake because while the Mayweather vs. McGregor fight has always been presented as a show and in the same way perceived, the Canelo vs. GGG fight was presented and recognized as a boxing event: two very different things then.
Mayweather said it from the first moment: I want to give a show to the fans. He didn’t say it was going to be the best boxing fight ever.
It would have been an insult to anybody intelligence to say that.
“You want to see a show? Buy my show with McGregor”. That’s it.
In this way, I believe, De la Hoya is putting his fight in the same place as the Mayweather vs McGregor one; a circus, where any kind of bull*** can be said.
Hate doesn’t work against Floyd Mayweather Jr. All the attempts from De La Hoya to discredit Mayweather, are playing against him and I’m quite sure that not only the PPV sales of Canelo vs GGG will be heavily affected from Mayweather vs. McGregor fight but that they will be surpassed by it.
Because Canelo vs GGG is not, in reality, a great fight.
To put this fight in the same sentence of the Hearns vs. Hagler fight is one of the exaggeration that promoters often say to promote their fights and usually this is fine but the timing this time was wrong, because it is going to create the perception that the fight is in the same league of Mayweather vs. McGregor’s one and not in a different, superior level.
Objectively Canelo and GGG are both untested fighters that faced average, if not poor opposition and when not, they lost (Canelo vs. Mayweather) or got controversial decisions (Austin Trout, Erislandy Lara and Miguel Cotto for Canelo and Daniel Jacobs for GGG).
I do not know if it is more annoying to listen sport commentators saying that Mayweather-Conor fight will be competitive – or even that Conor will win – or important boxing broadcasting saying that it is a disaster for boxing. Because if it’s really a disaster I do not understand why, every week, they are talking 75% of the time about this fight and 5% about the Canelo vs. GGG one.
In conclusion, I want to answer by myself to the question in the title: Canelo vs. GGG is a better fight then Mayweather vs. McGregor but only for boxing purist. For boxing fans, I believe, the answer is not that obvious as everybody is trying to tell us.