By Babatis Banda: I thought I saw Bob Arum at the fight. If I saw right, then what I am not sure about is if Arum came just to witness one of the most anticipated and richest fight in history of the sport, or he came to see if he can map-out a strategy to get Manny Pacquiao in the ring with Floyd Mayweather Jnr. At this point, we all know that this fight would just be for the sake of it. Making this fight would just be full-filling a fixture, it lost its luster and relevance years ago. In my mind, it does nothing to test Mayweather, except that it would continue to fuel a debate even if Mayweather schools Pacquiao, as he would.
It does not matter what Floyd does now, a certain section of the people have found peace in calling Mayweather Jnr 45-0 scared. They would still say that he waited until Pacquiao was washed up, as if he himself has the magic to stop his own clock.
It would be a big injustice for me not to say something about the Mayweather/Canelo fight in this article. Let me make this a little clearer here. This fight was more of hope than belief. What I mean is that even the hard-core critics of Mayweather are fully aware of his capabilities. They know exactly what Mayweather is able to do and where he stands in this sport. Take for instance, the walk-in to the ring.
That arena was packed to the rafters with mostly Canelo fans. The noise was deafening when Canelo walked into the ring. Now, this is what I noticed. When Mayweather walked to the ring, the crowd went silent. I expected boos, heavy and deafening boos. At that point, I said to myself, ‘they are all aware of what will happen here’.
Canelo was simply dis-armed, like a bugler alarm. This is typical of Floyd. He was right there in front of Canelo and sometimes really backing him into difficult situations. Say what you will, the commentators were correct to the last digit when one of them said Floyd was better than all of them, Ali, Sugar Ray, Robinson…. and you name them. Those guys just went to war, they were hit so much throughout their careers and took in sometimes, very bad losses. Floyd is simply out of this world when it comes to boxing and Pacquiao stood no chance yesterday, today or tomorrow. Call me what you like, these are facts and sometimes they are painful if you don’t like them.
I hope just for the sake of it, and for the noise makers, Floyd fights and shuts-out Pacquiao. The biggest complication though is that rewarding Pacquiao with a big Money fight after all this, is difficult to see. Is Pacquiao willing to swallow his pride? This means less money and a full-random blood testing without any cut-off dates. I don’t know how possible all this will be considering that Pacquiao fights for Top Rank, and there is certainly bad blood with Mayweather. All the same, the only fight that makes a little sense for Floyd at this point is Pacquiao, simply because of the hope, and not belief.
Talk about boxing judges. For those that say boxing is dying, they could possibly be correct because of how the sport is managed and regulated. It is common to see very bad decisions being made by people who are being called professionals and who are paid lots of money to do their job. Boxing needs a good strong regulation to look into issues of PEDs and bad handling of the sport by referees and judges. Why are the regulators mute over these serious issues? To call the Mayweather/Canelo fight a draw is not only wrong, it is morally despicable. These boxers put in so much in what they do and only to be insulted by people who earn a living out of the very boxers. It was such a shame for that judge and I hope she losses sleep over her bad judgment and should never be allowed to sit near a boxing ring ever again.
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