?The most important tool of my trade was a mirror.? ? Lana Turner
If Floyd Mayweather Jr. thought the backlash after his dull fandango with Manny Pacquiao was fierce, he must think the response to his upcoming swan song ? a pitiful mismatch against shopworn Andre Berto, whose major selling point may very well be, to paraphrase AJ Liebling, a gift for public suffering ? borders on nuclear fallout. In the walkout fight of his six-bout contract with Showtime (and supposedly the last start of his lucrative/surrealistic career), Mayweather faces Berto tonight at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nev., on a pay-per-view that seemed hexed from the moment it was announced.
Not even an overabundance of subplots ? some carefully crafted by publicists and their favorite penny-click outlets ? has managed to spark an interest in this fight. Narrative selling points include Rocky Marciano, retirement, ridiculous back-and-forth rhubarb with Ronda Rousey and even a (supposedly) personal grudge between Berto and Mayweather. But the buzz meter remains woefully low.
Mayweather, 38, is such a polarizing figure that even beating Manny Pacquiao last May offered a limited afterglow, one that lasted as long as a Snapchat selfie. In what was supposed to be some sort of ?Fight of the Century,? Mayweather-Pacquiao turned into a cynical non-event and a reminder of just how shrewd Mayweather is at selecting opponents when they are most vulnerable. (Believe it or not, you can actually find some, not interested in all the hoopla, who made that point before the fight took place.)
Now, in addition to the lackluster response Mayweather has drawn for facing Berto, ?Money? also faces new shadows cast on him regarding IV transfusions prior to his fight with Pacquiao.
Still, no matter how negative the consensus swirling around him is, the fact remains that Mayweather fulfills the number one prerequisite for a professional prizefighter: to generate his fortune by stirring the passions of aficionados. More often than not, that means being a thrill-maker in the ring; for Mayweather, it means combining his extraordinary talent with a cutting-edge popluxe sensibility: hashtags, reality television, clickbait gossip sites, hip-hop radio shows, paparazzi, GIFs and Instagram spam have intersected over and over again to give Mayweather an omnipresence most pugs can only dream of. In addition, Mayweather was the flagship fighter for not one but two media conglomerates during his career: HBO kicked off ?24/7? to publicize Mayweather-Oscar De La Hoya and Showtime has done everything for Mayweather except give him the starring role in ?Ray Donovan.?
Having earned more than half-a-billion dollars over the last decade, Mayweather has concretized the gaudy lifestyles depicted in so many hip-hop videos and songs over the years. In Emoji Land, where critical thinking is almost as scarce as honor among thieves, Mayweather has become a crossover touchstone ? the only boxer since De La Hoya to breach the mainstream. He has become a Digital Age Horatio Alger to a plugged-in America that often rewards outlandish behavior ? just think of Donald Trump, the boor du jour ? and no one in boxing has been as crass as Mayweather since his breakthrough in 2007. But will Mayweather really walk away from a sport that has given him everything? If he does, then you almost have to wonder what such a vainglorious man will do in his post-fight afterlife. Or are vampire facials, stripper poles and luxury cars enough for someone whose Narcissistic Personality Index score is probably off the charts?
Given the fact that Mayweather is hardly a cuddly celebrity ? shootings, restaurant brawls and altercations involving Thundersticks are liable to take place whenever ?Money? is present ? his boxing afterlife may be limited to his middling promotional company, in which Ishe Smith, J?Leon Love, Mickey Bey and Badou Jack rule a fairly threadbare roost. Of course, if housewives, dwarves, bakers, plastic surgeons, pre-teen beauty queens and K-Fed can star in reality television shows, then perhaps Mayweather has more options at hand than it seems.
Retirement, like competition, is not a concept with much meaning in boxing. Fighters quit, return and quit ad nauseam regardless of their circumstances. Mayweather himself abandoned the fight racket after stopping Ricky Hatton in 2007 (possibly to avoid a rematch with De La Hoya) before the IRS forced him back into the ring. More interesting, perhaps, is the fact that celebrity retirements have become a bit of a fad in the internet era. Justin Bieber, Shia LaBeouf, Lily Allen and, most remuneratively, Jay Z, all kept their names swirling in the HTML cycle by announcing premature ends to their careers. Is it possible that Mayweather is dangling his potential retirement in hopes of selling pay-per-views? (In the truthy netherworld of prizefighting, where misinformation and disinformation are a one-two combination that rarely misses, the word ?yes? should always be used with care.) Yes.
The straight man this time around is Andre Berto, who, just a few short years ago, was pondering retirement. A low-wattage spotlight has shined on Berto, 32, for nearly a decade now. Berto, who once seemed serious about fighting Chad Ochocinco, has had one of the oddest careers in boxing. As Exhibit A in the HBO Superstar Factory of the late-2000s, Berto was the beneficiary of a cynical buildup engineered almost entirely by network suits. When he first turned pro in 2004, Berto looked like a promising talent but his skills atrophied with every set-up he fought. Add to his middling competition the fact that he soon found himself fighting twice a year despite being only in his mid-20s at the time and you have a simple recipe for regression. Downtime due to injuries, anemia and a PED bust set him back even further. Although Berto has shown some improvement under new trainer Virgil Hunter ? particularly with his jab ? he remains a mediocre pro whose only real distinction is that he is the most notable welterweight victim on the ledgers of Victor Ortiz, Robert Guerrero and Jesus Soto Karass.
The normally inarticulate Berto has done his part in the buildup by attacking Mayweather personally. ?I don?t got nothing that I idolize about anybody like that who has to pay for friends, pay for women, pay for this, pay for that. I mean, that ain?t me,? Berto told David Mayo. ?I?m not one of these boxers that just fights and goes home and sits up with their wife and kids and tries to figure it out. I?m out there. I have a good time. Me, I?m an all-right-looking guy too. I?ve got a personality. I don?t need a hundred-million [dollars] to have any of your women walk outside of that house and come see me when they get tired of all that money talk ? all that lame, boring money talk. Everybody?s got money. That [stuff] gets tired.?
One thing Berto will have to figure out, however, is how he will manage to last the distance against a fighter light years ahead of middling pros such as Ortiz and Soto Karass. Over the last few years, Berto, Winterhaven, Fla., has been a knockabout fighter (he usually gets knocked about or knocked out) but the sheer chaos in his losses, combined with his connection to Al Haymon, has prevented him from slipping into the dark side of opponent status. Unlike, say Vivian Harris or Jeff Lacy, two fighters taking beatings for short money off the grid, Berto has never entered the ring as an underdog. But his matchmaking mojo comes to an end when he answers the bell against Mayweather. In fact, Berto, 30-3 (23), is almost certainly set to see the black lights at the MGM Grand. Unfortunately for Berto, this fight was announced on short notice for a pay-per-view outing. Given enough time, Berto might have been able to swing an endorsement deal with Oxycontin or, like Julius Francis against Mike Tyson in 2000, he could have had advertising stitched onto the soles of his shoes.
If Mayweather, fighting out of Las Vegas, Nev., is in the mood to break his streak of perfunctory exhibitions (as he was years ago against Phillip Ndou, DeMarcus ?Chop Chop? Corley and Sharmba Mitchell), he may open up more than he has in recent outings. Because Mayweather, 48-0 (26), has been, for the most part, so far ahead of his opponents both technically and physically, he has adopted an economical style based on counterpunching, a pinpoint jab and a jump-cut lead right. Look for Mayweather to work behind his jab and drop right hands over the top at will at Berto, whose defense is practically negligible at this stage of his career. Occasionally, Mayweather might step in to double up his left hook and land solid combinations that belie his efficient work rate recently. By the late rounds, Berto will probably look like roadkill and Mayweather will be called upon to show a finishing touch for the first time in years.
?At one particular time, I loved the sport of boxing,? Mayweather said in a press conference after outpointing Pacquiao. ?I wanted to go to every fight and wanted to be at every boxing event but I just lost the love for the sport.? If Mayweather, the King of Negative Appeal, exits with these sentiments in mind, then perhaps he has something in common with those who have watched his lurid ascension since he first turned pro in 1996 with an angry, grandstand persona, all the talent in the world and a brand-new mirror somewhere at hand.
