There was a great disconnect on display in Las Vegas on Saturday night. In the MGM Grand Garden Arena, while Floyd Mayweather was surgically deconstructing the last vestiges of Manny Pacquiao’s boxing career, desperate pleas of “Mann-y, Mann-y,” accompanied his every effort. But afterward, on the streets outside, amid the slow-moving hordes trudging along Las Vegas Blvd., Floyd Mayweather was the man. Hats and shirts pledging allegiance to The Money Team moved at a nose-guard’s pace, their owners giving satisfied nods to each passing member of the team.
This weeklong descent into absurdity, this boxing-match-as-television-show, ended a strange and unresolved morality play. It sparked a disparate and cacophonous national debate on domestic violence and capitalism and whether there’s room with them for either nuance or redemption.
Mayweather has always been fine with playing the role of the villain, as long as it spurred pay-per-view buys and generated interest in his fights. But when the idea of the villain turned from conceptual to literal, something changed. Mayweather became confused — and then increasingly flustered — with the insistence of the national media to press him on his history of domestic violence. In his mind, he was done with it; he had done his jail time and issued his non-answer answers to the questions, but here it was again, over and over, far more intense and searing than ever before. He was the new Ray Rice, five years after the conviction that led to two months behind bars, and he didn’t know what to make of this new turn. Hadn’t he fought five times since the conviction, including once (against Miguel Cotto) with a jail term waiting for him? Hadn’t he fought Marcos Maidana last September nearly a week after the Rice video was made public? Mayweather’s propensity for solving disputes with women with violence has been well-known for years. Why the outrage now?
But the world outside Mayweather had changed, and he didn’t seem to notice. The vehemence was legitimate and severe, and his inability to formulate a coherent response — “Only God can judge me” is a meaningless and cynical dodge — kept the story thriving. The man who controls everything, who never finds himself on his heels, was unable to control any part of the message. Outside Mayweather’s bubble, the competition to be his loudest and most appalled critic built and built, similar to how the competition to be his biggest booster builds inside that bubble. Ever since becoming “Money” Mayweather after fighting Oscar De La Hoya in 2007, he had been a willing participant in the morality play, shoving fistfuls of cash into the face of the establishment, but this time he went from a television-show heel to something very different: a man whose worst actions became a prism through which to address wealth, privilege and the power dynamic within relationships. Floyd Mayweather’s inability to formulate a coherent response in the face of question and controversy kept talk of his difficult past thriving. AP Photo/Isaac Brekken
Pacquiao’s trainer, Freddie Roach, threw acres of forest on the fire every chance he got. Pacquiao smiled through it all and said he wanted to study the bible with his opponent. Mayweather holed up in his gym, refusing most interviews, and trained like a maniac. He said he tried to ignore the negative, to wall himself away from reality as only he can, but after the fight he said he was offended by the framing of the fight as good vs. evil. “I didn’t appreciate everybody saying this was god against the devil,” he said. “I’m not perfect. He’s not perfect. We both need to grow and become better human beings.” Mayweather praised Pacquiao while Pacquiao and his people blamed a sore shoulder for the loss. (This after Pacquiao initially claimed he won.) Asked about Pacquiao’s injury, Mayweather chose his words carefully, saying he, too, had injuries but would not have used them as an excuse had he lost.
As Pacquiao and Roach and Top Rank promoter Bob Arum (especially Arum) chronicled the history of the shoulder injury, each citing a different origin and chronology, Floyd Mayweather Sr. sat in the stands of the arena and closed his eyes. When Arum criticized the Nevada State Athletic Commission for not allowing Pacquiao to receive an anti-inflammation injection, Big Floyd slowly rose from his seat, walked down the stairs and approached the podium. He raised his hand. This man who had been silenced throughout the buildup to the fight, from the opening press conference in Los Angeles to the final press conference in Las Vegas on Wednesday, wanted to ask a question. Someone with a vested interest in limiting the drama talked to him, and he lowered his hand and sat down, another opportunity lost.
Roach said he thought Mayweather “ran very well,” but he didn’t break style for this fight. In the run-up, he talked about control and profit and self-preservation, hardly fighting words. He said he wanted to give the fans (and Showtime, and HBO, and whoever else stood to gain) the fight they wanted, but what he really meant was the opponents they wanted. He never promised to slug it out with Pacquiao. At this point, 48 fights in, purchasing a Mayweather fight and coming away disappointed at the lack of toe-to-toe action is like going to a baseball game and walking away enraged that the light-hitting shortstop didn’t hit three home runs. It’s not what he does, or what he ever will do.
Mayweather inflicts his violence in the ring psychologically. The way Pacquiao backed away when it became evident his fourth-round flurry was Mayweather’s way of letting him know his best wasn’t enough, the way Mayweather shook his head in mockery whenever the crowd mistakenly thought Pacquiao landed a hard shot, the way he held his stare until Pacquaio turned away at the end of every round — it’s all calculated to maintain control, to dictate the terms of engagement. His eyes often do the work of his fists. The Mayweather Effect
Manny Pacquiao threw 429 total punches in Saturday’s night decision loss to unbeaten Floyd Mayweather, the fewest he’s thrown in any 12-round fight since 2009.Opponent Punches Mayweather 429 Bradley II 563 Marquez III 578 * Pacquiao Average Since 2009: 447 — ESPN Stats & Information
There once was a time when the high dudgeon of fight week was reserved for the topic of the sport’s inherent danger, of the guilt we should all feel as we celebrate the efforts of two men attempting to scramble each other’s brains.
Mayweather is the first long-term champion who has figured out how to profit obscenely from the sport while simultaneously fighting to preserve his cognitive abilities. Mayweather understands that every fight is like pouring liquid from one glass to another; you start off with a full glass but lose something — incremental but noticeable — every time. And so he fights to avoid contact and openly expresses his growing disdain for the sport that might end up paying him more than $150 million for 36 minutes of work. If you feel duped, that’s not his concern, as long as you paid for the privilege.
Near the end of Pacquiao’s post-fight press conference, Mayweather walked along the dais and shook the hands of Pacquiao’s adviser Michael Koncz, and Roach, and Arum, and Manny. Less than two hours before, the place had been filled with people who wanted to see him motionless on the canvas, the recipient of the kind of blow so many wish they could have delivered themselves.
Outside the arena, the hordes moved in satisfied slowness. When Mayweather stood at the podium, he talked about the fight before launching into a long and numbing dissertation on his various money streams. Outside the arena, as the hordes moved in satisfied slowness, Floyd wanted everyone who was still listening to know that revenue from The Money Team merchandise is $10 million a year.
