LAS VEGAS ? About a year ago, Mayweather-Pacquiao mania gripped this gambling mecca like few fights had ever done.
Taxi drivers were talking about it. Waiters brought it up to their hungry customers. The guy at the car wash had an opinion. Your neighbor. My neighbor. Las Vegas couldn’t wait for the big event.
And then the big event came and it stunk. It was a terrible fight. Floyd Mayweather easily defeated Manny Pacquiao, who revealed after the fight that he competed with a torn rotator cuff that would need surgery.
Promoters comforted themselves with the knowledge that the show sold a record 4.6 million on pay-per-view and generated more than a half-billion dollars in revenue.
Mayweather returned to the ring in September, and sold only 400,000 pay-per-views for a fight with Andre Berto.
After his surgery, Pacquiao came back on April 9 to face Timothy Bradley. That, too, was a pay-per-view disaster, not even hitting 400,000.
Combine the sales from Mayweather-Berto with those of Pacquiao-Bradley III and you’ll come up about 100,000 shy of the number that Canelo Alvarez and Miguel Cotto sold for their Nov. 21 bout for the WBC middleweight title.
Alvarez won that bout by unanimous decision to become the middleweight champion, and he returns for the first time since to face Amir Khan on Saturday in the inaugural bout at the new T-Mobile Arena.
Alvarez has taken over as the face of boxing, and has put memories of his disappointing 2013 loss to Mayweather well behind him. He’s gotten so big, he’s now deriding the quality of opposition of his most significant future opponent, Gennady Golovkin.
He fought Mayweather as an unbeaten and fully confident 23-year-old. A year earlier, he’d signed an endorsement deal with Under Armour, and the week of his bout with Mayweather, there were fans all over Las Vegas with T-shirts bearing a caricature of him.
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Canelo Alvarez, left, and Amir Khan (AP)
He simply wasn’t ready for Mayweather’s genius in the ring. Like so many before him, Alvarez stalked forward after Mayweather, trying to pulverize him but finding himself far too often swinging at air.
Mayweather is a virtuoso, a brilliant boxer who has the ability to make an opponent think he sees an opening. When the opponent attempts to seize on it, Mayweather quickly closes it and lands a counter shot before skittering to safety.
It frustrated Alvarez’s passionate followers, many of who descended upon the Las Vegas stores to return the T-shirts they’d purchased.
Alvarez is one of the most relaxed men in the boxing business, but the constant barrage of questions asking, “What happened?”, in the nearly three years since seems to have gotten to him a bit.
He was seated on a couch, leaning forward, the other day, peacefully completing one of his many pre-fight obligations by chatting with a couple of dozen boxing writers about his fight with Khan.
He said little of significance, but when Mayweather’s name inevitably popped up, he noticeably tensed.
His promoter, Oscar De La Hoya, has tried to frame the fight with Khan as one pitting Khan’s speed against Alvarez’s power.
And while Khan is very quick and Alvarez is a heavy-handed fighter, that characterization does not give enough credit to Alvarez’s boxing abilities.
He’s hardly just a slugger, and it’s odd to judge him a failure as a boxer because he was out-witted in the ring by Mayweather, the best boxer of this generation.
Alvarez is 46-1-1 with 32 knockouts. The loss, of course, came at the hands of Mayweather. The draw came when he was 15 and in just his fifth pro fight.
Other than that, he’s reeled off 46 victories without defeat against a who’s who of the best 147- and 154-pound fighters of the era.
Look at who he’s fought: He has wins over Cotto and Shane Mosley, both of whom appear headed for induction into the International Boxing Hall of Fame when they retire. He’s beaten slick boxers like Austin Trout and Erislandy Lara, as well as sluggers like Alfredo Angulo and James Kirkland.
He’s not as good of a boxer as Mayweather, and perhaps never will be, but that doesn’t mean he’s a bad boxer. And while Khan is quick and skilled, Alvarez isn’t just going to tear into him. He’ll break him down like any smart, experienced boxer should.
?We will see who gives who a boxing lesson,? Alvarez said.
Alvarez is the star, and he was greeted as such when he made his grand arrival at the MGM the other day. The lobby was jammed with his admirers, who shrieked in delight when he exited his car and walked into the hotel’s lobby.
De La Hoya said early trends for the pay-per-view are encouraging, though ominously, perhaps, T-Mobile Arena has yet to sell out.
He looks in magnificent shape, and he’s a heavy favorite not only because of his size, but also because of his skill. He understands his size is an advantage that he must take advantage of, but it’s only the most obvious.
“People expect me to go for the knockout, but I never go for it,” Alvarez said. “If it comes, it comes.”
Instead, he’ll look to box, and take the opportunity to finish if it arises.
One would expect no less of the sport’s biggest draw and, yes, one of its best boxers.
