LAS VEGAS ? If it was damage you wanted to see last night, the only place you found it was in your wallet or on your next cable bill.
For the kingly price of $99.00, you got to watch 12 rounds of boxing, but not 12 minutes of fighting. If track or gymnastics are your thing, Floyd Mayweather Jr. gave you plenty of that. If your idea of fighting is fencing, Mayweather was your man, as he was the judges at ringside.
But if you wanted to see a fight, you had to go to a bar room to find it because one didn?t break out at the MGM Grand Garden Arena, a fact made clear by the cascade of boos that rained down on Mayweather when he tried to speak after it was announced he?d won a unanimous 12-round decision.
Judge Dave Moretti had Mayweather a 118-110 winner whie judges Bert Clements and Glenn Feldman both had it 116-112 for Mayweather. The Herald saw it 116-113 for Mayweather as well.
?I see now why Manny Pacquiao is one of the fighters at the pinnacle of boxing,? Mayweather said after it was over. ?He had his moments in the fight. I had to keep moving on the outside. I was a smart fighter. He never figured out my left jab or my right hand. I outboxed him.?
Indeed he did, but the crowd was clearly unhappy with the way he had gone about it and so was the normally placid Pacquiao, who had relentlessly but mostly fruitlessly pursued Mayweather in an attempt to catch him but was unable to land often enough to mount a consistent attack.
?I thought I won the fight,? said Pacquiao (57-6-2, 38 KOs), a surprising response from a guy who seldom complains. ?I caught him many more times than he hit me. I was very surprised at the scores.
?I got him with more solid punches. I hit him many more times than he hit me. It?s not easy to throw a lot of punches with him moving around.?
As HBO telecaster Max Kellerman questioned Pacquiao, suggesting Mayweather had done more with straight right hands and a defense that blunted the effectiveness of Pacquiao?s attack than Pacquiao seemed to feel, the crowd began booing him nearly as lustily as it had Mayweather.
?He didn?t do nothing,? Pacquiao snorted, saying little more and clearly being deflated by the fight?s lack of being, well, a fight. A goodly part of the reason for that was the 5-inch reach advantage Mayweather had, which he used well all night to keep Pacquiao away and to control the fight?s distance. For that he had no answer and Mayweather (48-0, 26 KOs) figured that out as the fight progressed and used it all night long to his advantage.
Fight fans were forced to wait a bit longer than expected when pay-per-view providers had trouble handling the volume of buy orders and the feed wavered in some parts of the country, forcing the fighters to wait in their dressing rooms an extra 30 minutes. Since they?d already waited over five years to face each other, it seemed a small(er) price to pay.
Finally, at 11:48 p.m. Eastern time, Pacquiao slipped between the ropes and into the ring, his long pursuit of Mayweather over at last. He seemed buoyed by the roar of the crowd, smiling as he moved closer and closer to the ropes.
Moments later a cascade of boos sounded as Mayweather was shown on massive TV monitors above the ring leaving his dressing room. Where Pacquiao had been beaming, his hands thrown up in the air in exaltation on several occasions, Mayweather seemed subdued, as he had throughout the bulk of the promotion, his face stoic.
Whatever the two of them were thinking only they knew but each understood one thing: no turning back now. Soon the doors around them would be slammed shut and they would be sharing hard time with each other and no one else.
Both fighters seemed tight and cautious, measuring each other carefully in the fights early moments. Mayweather tried to score from the outside, using his reach advantage, and when Pacquiao slipped under it and tried to work inside Mayweather repeatedly grabbed and held on, much to the crowd?s dismay.
Mayweather?s holding and pushing down on Pacquiao?s neck raised not only loud boos but a warning from referee Kenny Bayless midway through Round 3 but that did not dissuade him. Pacquiao may have, however, when he nailed him with a straight left hand to the mug that snapped his head back and sent him to the ropes with his gloves covering his ears with 1:22 left in Round 4.
Pacquiao swarmed him but could do no more serious damage but he had certainly caught his attention, a fact made clear when Mayweather spent most of the next round staying away and holding and grabbing when Pacquiao got close. Bayless warned him again for pushing and holding but did nothing to stop it.
Pacquiao became more aggressive in Round 6, attacking Mayweather several times with combinations, including a four-punch combination to the body with Mayweather?s back against the ropes. Each time, Mayweather shook his head ?no,? which in boxing usually means ?oh, no? but he suffered no real damage.
Mayweather boxed and moved beautifully, often blunting Pacquiao?s aggressiveness with his speed and ability to pivot out of trouble. But the offense that so often flowed from his defense seemed bottled up, in part out of his concerns for what Pacquiao represented, which was mortal danger.
On the other hand, Pacquiao was missing far more often than landing and when he got inside was often tied up before he could do much but land an occasional combination. This was a tactical fight of equals, neither doing much to the other. If this were fencing, Mayweather might have been in control but in boxing some damage is expected to be inflicted at some point and little was.
With two rounds to go, the fight seemed a toss-up, although if anyone had a lead it was Mayweather and he boxed like it until midway through the round he landed a short uppercut inside that snapped Pacquiao?s head. A minute later, Pacquiao showed his first sign of frustration, clapping his fists together as Mayweather retreated, as if to say ?Might we begin fighting sometime soon??
Mayweather mocked the move at the end of the round, staring back at Pacquiao as he walked to his corner and then mockingly punching his own gloves together. It was the hardest he punched all night but after three more minutes that seemed more ?Dancing With the Stars? than anyone being in danger of seeing stars, his hand was raised. In the end, that?s all Floyd Mayweather cared about.
