FLOYD Mayweather Jr. stood up from his throne, walked towards the pretender and offered him a handshake that, for all intents and purposes, opened the floodgates to new talks of the eagerly-awaited fight of theirs. Many a time that fight negotiations had been scuttled since 2010 for all the wrong reasons; even the likes of Donald Trump, himself the master negotiator, was baffled no end.
It was a scene from like a page of a Hollywood script, Mayweather heroically shedding his cloak of gaudiness and presenting himself to the one he had professed hatred until this monster moment.
Suddenly, the world saw Mayweather standing in front of Manny Pacquiao, the crown pretender, during halftime of an NBA game between Miami and Milwaukee. As everybody now knows, both are Miami fans.
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Will Pacquiao mind the pretender tag?
I pray, he shouldn?t.
For, let us admit it. No matter how you look at it, any which way you can, it will always be Mayweather who will come out the more marquee fighter than Pacquiao.
No doubt that among world-class boxers the last 10 years or so, Pacquiao is the hands-down choice as the most exciting, most thrilling and most entertaining even. His aggressive, oftentimes devil-may-care, stance has captured the imagination of a throng that loves only action, action and more action. Only Pacquiao has provided that consistently all this time.
But ring record-wise, nothing beats Mayweather?s 47-0 mark, built with razor-sharp precision that will now be tested by the fistic fantasies of Pacquiao once they finally meet as projected on May 2 at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas.
The fact that Mayweather is only two wins shy of equaling the great, lamented, Rocky Marciano?s 49-0 mark when he retired as world heavyweight champion, makes the Pacquiao-Mayweather bout more than a must-fight. Its impact would be too much to ignore, its promise at the tills too tempting that to torpedo it altogether would amount to a crime against boxing enthusiasts in particular and against humanity in general.
Thus, after initiating the peace process, Mayweather next gave Pacquiao a visit at his hotel room in Miami.
If they talked about the birds and the bees and the flowers and the trees, fine.
They need a lot of catching up, you know.
