The odyssey in getting here can be worth the trouble.
It was on a sultry night in Manila, when Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier pummeled each other until their heads ballooned in their belated third fight in 1975. It was on a spring night behind Caesars Palace in 1987, when Sugar Ray Leonard outhustled Marvelous Marvin Hagler in a fight awaited almost as long as this one, and again at the same venue in 1989, when Leonard got the benefit of a draw in the rematch of his win eight years earlier over Thomas Hearns.
That isn’t always the case, but it is the hope when Floyd Mayweather and Manny Pacquiao fight May 2 in Las Vegas.
The fight is five years too late. Of that, there is no doubt. Mayweather gets hit more than he used to, even if no one has conquered him in a prize ring. Pacquiao always got hit, but he hit hard enough to make it a dangerous proposition to try. He hasn’t knocked out anyone since 2009.
Along the way, boxing fans split along racial lines, nationalistic lines, cultural lines. Mayweather accused Pacquiao of steroid use and lobbed racial epithets, saying he would stomp the midget then force him to prepare sushi rolls and rice. Pacquiao refused demands of enhanced drug testing at a time he might have received a better split of the funds than the 60-40 favoring Mayweather today.
Pacquiao got beat twice and knocked out once.
Mayweather missed the first of those losses while sitting in a Las Vegas jail cell on a domestic conviction.
Mayweather made everyone in boxing play the political game of his choosing, and got into tax trouble, quickly resolved.
Pacquiao became a congressman in his native Philippines, and got into tax trouble, yet unresolved.
The longer the fight happened, the more people began to cling to the sales pitch that Mayweather, the more powerful figure, and the one who should be able to facilitate the fight, had opted against it. That only gets translated one way in the fight game: Scared.
DSC_0622.JPG Floyd Mayweather will put his unbeaten record on the line again. Josh Slagter | MLive.com It wasn’t fear that kept Mayweather and Pacquiao apart, so much as disdain. And it occurred on many levels, which could foretell an extremely testy promotion.
Mayweather detests Bob Arum, Pacquiao’s promoter and formerly his own. The feeling is mutual. HBO televises Pacquiao and isn’t particularly fond of Showtime, Mayweather’s network that feels pretty much the same. Al Haymon, the in-the-shadows Mayweather business adviser who has ridden that role to become one of the handful of most influential figures in boxing, has spurned working with Arum in doing so.
Only problem — and the thing that greased this deal more than anything, except perhaps the two fighters taking control of negotiations themselves — was that they all needed each other more as time passed. Relationships they once considered parasitic came to be viewed as symbiotic.
Mayweather will be 38 and Pacquiao 36 when they fight. They have become graybearded awaiting each other, yet for as long as they have played the risky game of tickling the public’s emotions without actually scratching the itch, patience for the overripe fight hardly waned. Part of that is the unadulterated perfection of Mayweather, part is the broad appeal of Pacquiao, and part is a thirsty public in a sport understaffed with identifiable stars gulping up the one fight that has evaded them for a half-decade.
So the public will buy, just like it always has when a fight was too late.
Lennox Lewis vs. Mike Tyson was the richest fight in history before Mayweather broke all records, and Tyson was in far steeper decline in 2002 than either Mayweather or Pacquiao today. Felix Trinidad was no match for Oscar De La Hoya until the latter backpedaled his way to defeat in an overdue 1999 fight. Joe Louis hadn’t won a heavyweight title fight in five years when Rocky Marciano knocked him through the ropes in 1951. James Jeffries had been out of the sport six years before his 1910 “Fight of the Century” comeback against Jack Johnson.
Floyd Mayweather and Manny Pacquiao Manny Pacuqiao hasn’t had a knockout since 2009. AP Photo Big fights always happen too late. The public always buys.
Mayweather and Pacquiao didn’t need a rematch clause, and there isn’t one, because they haven’t left a lot of time for a series of fights between them anyway. If they have mutual need for a second fight, that can be sorted later.
The important thing was getting it together this time — even if the point at which it became considered too late passed at least three years ago — and all parties setting aside their various animosities for the good of the sport.
For all the ills of boxing, the best possible fight in the sport rarely goes unmade, and this one is particularly special, because it is the biggest in boxing since Leonard-Hagler 28 years ago. We said that of Mayweather-De La Hoya in 2007. It is true again today.
For five years, Mayweather and Pacquiao didn’t do the one thing that would seem to come most naturally to great champions and pound-for-pound kings. They averted their greatest potential challenge, as determined by fans who watch the sport and pay for it. Their opinions were ignored in opponent selection time after time, but their opinions are all that matter in weighing which fights matter the most and sell the best.
Mayweather and Pacquiao made it happen, even if the fight was left in the oven five years too long.
The best hope is a recipe too perfect for the burnt edges to matter.
