Quick, what was the biggest boxing match since Floyd Mayweather-Manny Pacquiao?
Exactly.
Only a hardcore boxing fan will have a ready answer. Since the dud that was Mayweather-Pacquiao, the general sports fan has taken little to no notice of the sport. Conor MacGregor isn’t a boxer, by the way, and neither is Ronda Rousey.
Pacquiao fought and won Saturday in Las Vegas for the second time since losing to Mayweather. Minutes before the main event, the former pound-for-pound king — Mayweather, not Pacquiao, though the description fits both — sent Thomas & Mack Center into a tweeting frenzy when he showed up ringside. When it ended in a 12-round decision for Pacquiao, Mayweather mouthed the words “Not bad” to his rival, then quickly departed.
It all left many to speculate that Mayweather-Pacquiao II is in the offing in spring 2017, to which the proper response is of course it is. When Mayweather sparred last month for the first time since September 2015 victory over Andrew Berto, it offered the first dead giveaway that fighting was not only on his mind, but on his agenda. He doesn’t spar for kicks.
He also doesn’t show up to fight cards very often, like Saturday, unless he has an interest in the promotion. Being next opponent for the featured fighter surely qualifies.
Pacquiao said after beating Jessie Vargas that he invited Mayweather to the fight, which is only proper decorum when you have a business partner who helped you manufacture a half-billion-dollar production, and no possibility of replicating anything close to it with any other business partner.
None of this is to suggest the fight will be any more appealing next time, or that Pacquiao’s chances are any better than in the original 12-round Mayweather decision victory, or that his arthroscopic shoulder repair will have any effect on the rematch.
It won’t be, they aren’t, and it won’t.
But boxing exploits megaevents, and always has had them, to remain relevant. They are even more critical with the ever-expanding competition for the sports entertainment dollar, and there hasn’t been a blockbuster since Mayweather-Pacquiao.
Pay-per-view returns have tanked since the richest fight in history. Some of that is Mayweather malaise after three years of biannual fights made him the highest-earning athlete in the world, and some is the lack of a charismatic personality to fill his void.
The biggest names in boxing also have spent a bit too much time circling each other, though not inside a ring, rather than actually fighting. Gennady Golovkin and Saul “Canelo” Alvarez talk about fighting but haven’t. Sergey Kovalev and Andre Ward will fight in a two weekends in a pay-per-view market test. Fight fans will embrace both, and Golovkin-Alvarez has a chance of reaching crossover sports fans.
Mayweather-Pacquiao II does both.
Boxing won’t suffer from two old warhorses trying to recreate a fight that didn’t thrill anyone the first time. That argument is ludicrous because that damage is complete, not pending. Anyone who felt ripped off by the $100 pay-per-view charge and duped by the first fight either isn’t buying the rematch or isn’t educated enough to buy fights. Either way, that buyer is gone. The first fight did 4.6 million domestic buys and the number of people who buy the rematch, but did not buy the original, will be miniscule. But not every one of those 4.6 million buyers vanished, and many fans among that educated core never expected more than exactly what they got from Mayweather-Pacquiao.
Boxing has suffered from a lot of things — decades of decay in the amateur feeder system and inconsistent international rules, splintering the heavyweights during a decade in which two brothers dominated the glitziest division without fighting each other and without a legitimate American challenger, and decades with the biggest fights tucked behind subscription networks and pay-per-view walls — but a rematch of a fight that didn’t satisfy its massive audience the first time can only disappoint those hardened enough to boxing and pay-per-view to push the buy button again.
Fact is, Pacquiao has outslicked and soundly defeated a pair of top-10 welterweights, Timothy Bradley and Vargas, since the Mayweather loss. He turns 38 next month and has significant outside interests in the Senate of the Philippines, and with future presidential aspirations, but also is completely capable of beating just about any 147-pounder in a boxing ring, save one.
Mayweather, who turns 40 in February, with a 49-0 record since his professional debut 20 years ago last month, is long overdue a comeuppance. Those who still cling to hope that Pacquiao and his cleaned-up shoulder can deliver it will buy the fight. So will the hardcore boxing fans. So will some periodic crossover fans who weren’t shocked by the boxing lesson that was Mayweather-Pacquiao I. And so will the legions who buy both of these fighters religiously, because boxing is about two things, ability and marketability, of which marketability is far rarer and more precious for as long as it can be sustained.
It is a quaint notion to think Mayweather or Pacquiao suddenly would start fighting the young guns among the welterweights, like Keith Thurman and Errol Spence Jr. But then they have to renew the process of teaching the crossover public about the up-and-comer’s identity. Too much work for too little reward.
No introduction needed for a rematch that still easily would do 2.5 million-plus domestic buys. If any other business repelled 40 percent of its consumers in one night, it might close shop. For Mayweather-Pacquiao II, it means the second-richest fight ever.
The fight has a shelf life. The fighters have shelf lives. Mayweather and Pacquiao had all the same complications and miscalculations in their negotiations — and then some — as Golovkin and Alvarez, and Ward and Kovalov. The original proposal was for a fight in spring 2010. It happened five years later. If there is a market for the rematch, which there most assuredly is, and if the fighters are willing, then the rematch should happen, particularly given all the machinations required to make the original.
There aren’t many megafights on the horizon, and in 14 months since Mayweather’s retirement, the biggest possible matchup that could be made between active fighters, Golovkin-Alvarez, hasn’t happened.
No matter how bad anyone thought Mayweather-Pacquiao I was, the richest possible fight that could be made in boxing today, like it or not, is Mayweather-Pacquiao II. Next would be Mayweather against Alvarez, whom he already fought, and Mayweather against Golovkin, and given the reticence in finding middle ground for Golovkin-Alvarez, maybe seeing the old guys go at it again would spur something between those fighters and their camps.
Big fights beget big fights. Mayweather and Pacquiao found themselves at the same boxing ring for the first time in 18 months Saturday, and should find themselves inside the same ring next year. Just as they couldn’t possibly meet the absurdly inflated expectations of the first match, they can’t help but meet diminished rematch projections. And boxing really hasn’t been the same without both of them.
