By Kenny Rodriguez Sosa: This past Saturday night, we finally got to watch the fight that fans all over the World were waiting for. We are talking about the fight between two living legends of the sport of boxing; the fight between this generation’s most dominating boxers; we are talking about the fight between Floyd Mayweather and Manny Pacquiao.
The event was billed as “The Fight of the Century”, and it was the type of fight that even non-boxing fans would feel tempted to buy, but there was one thing that the hardcore fans of the sweet science knew, and casual fans didn’t; that this event never be able to live up to its hype.
This lackluster event failed to have an undercard that would provide fight fans, and even those who aren’t fans of the sport but would watch the event, the opportunity to showcase top contenders or even champions who would provide the excitement and firepower that boxing matches so often do just in case the main event failed to do so, which was something that many hardcore boxing fans were expecting to happen. Like for example, the undercard of Floyd vs. Canelo showcased a Jr. Welterweight Championship match, Garcia vs. Matthysse, which was clearly expected to provide fight fans with a lot of excitement since both guys like to exchange leather in the middle of the ring. Also, the Mayweather vs. Cotto undercard, provided us with a can’t miss fight between Canelo Alvarez, a young up and coming champion who likes to provide fight fans with exciting fight, and “Sugar” Shane Mosley, who even though he wasn’t nearly as good as he was in the peak of his powers, has never been labeled as a guy who doesn’t like to trade hard punches in the middle of the ring to provide fans with excitement. You may wonder, why is a stacked undercard so important? A simple answer is that an event like this would serve as a presentation letter to those who aren’t boxing fans but definitely will tune in to watch an event of this magnitude, and just like when you’re about to date a girl for the first time, you want to give a good first impression to win her over.
Making a good first impression is exactly what this event failed to accomplish. Instead of winning over those who aren’t fans of the sport, it actually made them feel even less interested in tuning in for fights, especially one of those many PPV events that we constantly get every year. The majority of them felt ripped off because they paid such a large sum of money to watch an event that failed to meet the expectations of those who thought that it would be just as good as billed. Top Rank has many exciting young fighters that could’ve been used to stack up the undercard of such important event for the sport of boxing. One great option would’ve been Terence Crawford, who is expected by many to be the next great superstar of the sport, and could’ve benefited from participating in such a huge event if Arum would’ve scheduled better his last fight. He would’ve gotten a lot of exposure to those who aren’t boxing fans, and he would’ve given himself and the sport a chance to lure them into watching the sport more often. Other thing that the event failed to accomplish was to give a versatile set of fights that could satisfy the different types of fans that the sport of boxing has.
There are different types of boxing fans, and each type of fan appreciates the sport in a different way. We have those fans who enjoy slugfests and the so called “crowd-pleasing” fighting styles and fighters. This type of fan is the one that goes head over heels whenever a matchup between two sluggers is scheduled. For example, many people were really excited of the prospect of just imagining what was going to happen inside the ring when the Provodnikov vs. Matthysse fight was announced. Also, this type of fan is the one who constantly remembers people around them about different classics that he had watched in the past, including Hagler vs. Hearns, Trinidad vs. Vargas, Tyson vs. Holyfield, the Gatti vs. Ward Trilogy, just to mention a few. This type of fan loves knockouts, knockdowns and bloody fights, and I can safely say that this type of fan didn’t get to watch anything that he could call interesting in last Saturday’s event since the card lacked of a power puncher who could’ve kept them on the edge of their seats and who could’ve ended the fight with a single blow. Normally, casual fans and non-boxing fans would fit inside this category, and they could’ve easily been lured towards watching the sport more if the card had a fight that had the prospect of ending like this. There are also other types of fans who enjoy the sport of boxing for the sweet science that it actually is.
Don’t get me wrong as I’m not here to criticize the classy performance by this generation’s very best boxer, in which he was able to make this generation’s second greatest fighter look like an average contender who was overmatched by an opponent who clearly demonstrated to be by far the better boxer. What Floyd did last Saturday night was truly special, and only those who love the sweet science would be able to appreciate what this man did against a living legend like Manny Pacquiao. Floyd outclassed Pacquiao in every way that a boxer can outclass an opponent while staying inside the rules of what the sport of boxing is. Many people tend to forget the real purpose of a fighter in boxing is to try to hit an opponent with as many punches on your opponent as possible without getting hit, and I have never seen someone who is better at not getting hit flush than Mayweather. The man’s defense is something unheard of, and so you can have an idea of how good his defense actually is, just think of this; the man has been fighting for almost two decades, and you he has rarely been tagged by a hard punch in 48 fights that he has fought in that span. We all know that there are fans who don’t appreciate the work that this man does inside the ring, but at the end of the day, we have to remember that everyone is entitled to their opinions regarding a subject, and it’s impossible to please everyone. But whether you like him or not, you should respect everything that he has accomplished inside the squared circle.
I truly believe that the event failed to live up to its incredible hype, but the question here is who should we blame for it? Everyone is to be blamed for it, especially the promoters and everyone involved in the making of this event. First, the price tag in the USA was just ridiculous, and it happened just because everyone involved wanted to make enormous profit out of it. None of the promoters even bothered to try to put on a stacked undercard capable of making the event worth our time if the main event happened to be what it turned out to be, o a one-sided mismatch. Boxing itself is to blame for what happened on Saturday. The sport has allowed way too many boxing organizations and too many title belts in every division there is. Even some of the organizations are allowed to have multiple versions of the same belt, which is a travesty. This allows multiple champions in each weight class, and they’re not even forced into fighting each other to try to find out who’s the real champion of each weight class. Boxing is also responsible because it has allowed certain boxers to think that they’re even bigger than the sport itself, and this is something that we’ve seen for years. But boxing isn’t the only one to blame since the one element that should be blamed the most is us, the actual fans.
We are the ones who make them millionaires because we’re the ones paying our hard earned money to watch these fighters perform. We’re the ones who, even though we wanted Floyd to fight Pacquiao for the past five years, we paid to watch him take other fights, which the majority of them were huge mismatches. We were the ones paying to watch Pacquiao fight overmatched opponents who actually never had a chance against him. We were the ones who paid to watch Mayweather vs. Guerrero, Pacquiao vs. Rios, Mayweather vs. Maidana, Pacquiao vs. Algieri and so on. We were the ones who didn’t do enough to force them into fighting each other, and they held us hostages for years until they finally met and ripped us off so much money for a lackluster event that should’ve had a stacked undercard to start with. This event actually represents everything that’s wrong with boxing, and all of us are to blame for it.
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