In this series, I’ve written about Manny Pacquiao’s strange place in popular culture, how you should feel paying money to Floyd Mayweather and how this could be the end of Pay-Per-View as we know it. But there is still so, so much to cover in relation to the Manny Pacquiao-Floyd Mayweather fight. So I needed to bring in reinforcements.
Daniel Roberts has emerged in the last few years as one of the most vital, urgent voices in the world of boxing. His seminal work on Floyd Mayweather for Deadspin remains the driving influence behind a national re-evaluation of the boxer , and he knows the sport as well as anyone you’ll find. So he and I shared a series of emails over the last week, a primer on why the fight is happening, who is at a disadvantage both physically and financially and What This Fight Means For Boxing. Make sure to read his work @ironmikegallego, and enjoy.
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Will Leitch: You’re one of the best boxing writers I know, and you’ve been tracking the inexorable, years-long march to this fight from the get-go. So my first question is: What did make this fight come together finally? Is it as simple as each fighter watching their PPV numbers start to dwindle and realizing that it’s now or never? Is there anything either one of them has to “prove”? One of the things I keep bumping my head against with this fight is that, well, even though they’re two of the greatest fighters of all time and everyone has wanted them to fight for so long, they don’t seem like natural rivals, you know? They don’t seem to uniquely hate each other, they’re not obvious contrasts, it’s not like they are both coming off convincing, dominating performances and only have to beat each other before there’s no one left in the world. It’s not Hagler-Hearns. Or am I crazy? It just feels like they’re finally doing this fight because they have to: Because the payday is too ridiculous, at last, for them not to. Is there something else I’m missing?
Daniel Roberts: I’ll try to contain what Don King would probably describe as my prolixacapacity, but you’ve asked so many good questions, I fear that might prove challenging.
What made this fight happen? In a word: capitulation. With the animosity and egos involved, the only way this fight was ever going to happen is if one man completely and unreservedly humbled himself before the other. When the fight was first envisioned in 2009, after Mayweather none-too-subtly announced his return from an aborted retirement on the morning of Pacquiao’s evisceration of Ricky Hatton, it was Pacquiao who held all the cards. Manny was surfing a tsunami-sized wave of momentum off his career-ending beatdown of Oscar De La Hoya and a knockout of Hatton that was so vicious that most in the arena (myself included) briefly worried that he had died before he even hit the ground. Mayweather owned victories over both De La Hoya and Hatton, too, but they were older, and as our pal Brian Kenny pointed out repeatedly, the fights had been much closer and far less exciting than Pacquiao’s relentlessly brutal desecration of both legends. Without the upper hand, Floyd was left to make baseless PED allegations and geographically-inaccurate racial slurs to try and bait Pacquiao into a fight. With a host of ready-made Bob Arum stablemates lined up to fight, Manny didn’t take the bait. And with his, err, colorful personality and gentle demeanor, Manny looked ready to become a crossover star and leave the sullen Mayweather in the dust. Remember when Manny and hip youngster Lea Michele briefly served as faces of the HP TouchPad tablet?
Since then, however, Pacquiao’s career has followed essentially the same trajectory as, well, the TouchPad’s sales. While Mayweather has held steady since 2010, Pacquiao has shown considerable evidence of decline. He hasn’t knocked out an opponent in ten fights, including his last foe, a glorified reality-show contestant who was living in his parent’s basement in Long Island. He’s lost two of his last five fights, one somewhat controversially, the other in the least controversial way imaginable: a knockout every bit as brutal as his own knockout of Hatton. Today, Mayweather is by far the biggest draw in the sport (even so, three of his last fights have been financial losers at the box office) and Pacquiao, who once boxed in the Cowboys Stadium, has been fighting outside the US and failing to attract much attention within it.
That explains how the power imbalance has shifted to the extent that Mayweather could effectively dictate the terms of the fight, which he did, but it doesn’t fully explain why Manny was finally ready to kowtow before him. After all, Mayweather has clearly had the leverage for years now, but Manny consistently rejected prior deals that were stacked in Mayweather’s favor. Maybe Manny realizes that he has little to lose at this stage in his career and wants a career-defining victory badly enough to push his pride to the side? Maybe Manny, who has increasingly talked up his relationship with Jesus in recent years, has matured beyond the need to engage in petty ego battles? Or maybe it’s, oh, that $75 million tax bill he’s fighting? It’s hardly a comforting thought if you’re a Pacquiao supporter to think that he’s simply going through the motions for a paycheck, but it’s also probably the most likely scenario. Not that there’s anything wrong with that: being paid handsomely is the best reason to allow another man to punch you in the face in front of a global audience for 36 minutes, but if Manny’s heart isn’t in it, it certainly doesn’t auger well for his chance to pull the upset.
And, unfortunately, there’s good reason to think that Manny’s heart isn’t in it. He hasn’t seemed focused on being a fighter in years. In the Philippines, where he’s more God than man, he is a full-time congressman, a professional basketball player, and, of course, a singer. The vicious go-for-the-jugular instinct that grew out of the crippling poverty of Pacquiao’s childhood seems to have atrophied as his celebrity and bank accounts have swelled. It’s not just that he’s stopped getting knockouts, it’s that he hasn’t seemed to care. The guy who once made Jim Lampley scream “Manny Pacquiao is a storm!” has become a more of a dense, slow-moving fog.
This gets into another one of your questions: there really is nothing else out there for Manny. An aging, no-longer-invincible, off-key lounge singer who has lost his fastball simply does not make for compelling television, especially at a time when PPV prices are quickly converging with Prius lease rates. His only other bankable opponent, long-time nemesis Juan Manuel Marquez, has pretty clearly said he’s not interested in fighting Pacquiao for a fifth time (Marquez, who along with a fair number of boxing fans felt that he was robbed on the scorecards in his first three fights with Pacquiao, is happy to see their series end with an image of Manny’s face firmly planted in the canvas). Despite his popularity in Manila, you can bet Jimmy Kimmel isn’t interested in having Manny on to sing or tell bad jokes unless it’s to promote a fight. This is it. A final payday.
Will Leitch: And so what about Mayweather? Why now?
Daniel Roberts: The calculus is far more interesting from Mayweather’s perspective. Famously risk averse, immensely emotionally dependent on his undefeated record, and with a fairly huge guaranteed payday from Showtime regardless of his opponent, he didn’t need this fight as badly as Manny does. So why now? I’ve got two theories. The first is that Floyd saw what the rest of us saw?an increasingly safe opponent whose reputation now exceeds his ability?and decided he’d better fight Manny now while there was still some interest in it. That’s certainly consistent with Mayweather’s history: he ducked several tough challenges on his way up, and didn’t fight big name opponents like Oscar De La Hoya and Shane Mosley till the very tail end of their careers. The second theory, more fun but likely more fanciful too, is that his management pushed him into it. Mayweather’s contract with Showtime, according to virtually every media account, has been a huge money-loser for the network up till now. If Mayweather finished up the guaranteed deal by fighting more mediocre foes like Marcos Maidana and Robert Guerrero, Showtime would take an absolute bath, and it’s likely that Mayweather’s management would be persona non grata around those parts for a while. Having badly burned their bridges with HBO by moving Mayweather to Showtime for this last deal, this would leave his increasingly ambitious management team with few outlets for their product. With Mayweather’s fighting career coming to an end soon regardless of what happens on May 2, his management team needs to pave the bridge to their next generation of fighters. Delivering a boffo box office megadeal to Showtime is a good way to cement their pipeline for years to come.
Will Leitch: So I’m gonna assume you’re not as excited about this fight as you would’ve been five years ago?
Daniel Roberts: To be honest, I’d rather not even see the fight come about now. As a boxing fan, I worry that the most likely outcome will artificially inflate Mayweather’s legacy at the expense of a perhaps financially desperate Pacquiao. I’d sooner never engage in another argument with another Mayweather fan who is convinced their guy is “the best ever,” let alone one armed with the chestnut that Floyd knocked off the number two guy of his generation.
This is a fight not made because it is the best fight out there, nor because it will prove who is the best fighter in the sport, but because it was financially expedient and there is minimal downside to both men. It’s a fight made because Manny’s side completely ran out of leverage and gave Mayweather everything he wanted. Like I said, in a word: capitulation.
