After waiting more than five long years, the richest fight in boxing history became a … read more
Painfully efficient, cold, calculated, elusive, and unforgiving; Deep Blue, a machine built by IBM in the early nineties, came onto the scene and suddenly made masters of the game of chess appear ordinary and vulnerable. Gary Kasparov, a renown chess master known for his aggressive and dynamic play, fell victim to Deep Blue’s strategic dismantling in 1996. Kasparov’s aggression was simply no match for the machine’s lack of emotion and relentless calculations.
I am going to state the obvious just so everybody knows my point. Floyd Mayweather is a businessman first and a fighter second (maybe). He treats boxing as a business and not a sport. Smart if you are a man driven by money. I realize that Mayweather will not take fights that he thinks will challenge him, which is why Mayweather waited six years to fight Manny Pacquiao. There have been some guaranteed first ballot hall of famers who took fights with high risk and low reward.
2012 was a year dominated by many things. The Italian cruise liner ‘The Costa Concordia’ ran aground causing 32 deaths, Usain Bolt became the first man in history to win the 100m and 200m sprint in back to back Olympics, the USADA stripped Lance Armstrong of his seven Tour De France titles, Barack Obama was returned to the White House for another term of office and the world waited with baited breath to see if the Mayan Doomsday Prophecy would see us all enjoy a last meal on December 21st.
In 2014, I wrote an article for this website called “Get Real – Mayweather-Pacquiao Would Not ‘Save’ Boxing.” In it, I challenged the notion that Mayweather –Pacquiao – or any other superfight for that matter – really benefit the sport beyond the fight itself.
The triumph of politics and hype over the sport of boxing is unanimous, professional boxing exists as a sport only nominally and has turned into a financial instrument. Show business likes scripts and scenarios and everything was under control last night, judging/scoring and even punch stats calculations occurred independently and irrespectively of the action in the ring or of the actual number of landed shots. The fight definitely did not live up to the hype except perhaps financially – the alleged fight of the century will hardly qualify for a fight of the year candidate.
It went exactly as feared, or hoped, depending on which side of the fence you were on. If you came in expecting action then you were at the wrong fight. If you came looking for answers and a little bit of drama, then you probably came away satisfied, although perhaps a little bit disappointed. It wasn’t until I first saw them nose to nose at the kickoff press conference that I got a real sense of the size difference between these two men. The stats can tell you a lot, but seeing the two of them face to face, Manny looking up into Floyd’s eyes, really gave a sense of the uphill battle that Manny was facing. However, the fight was not about size, it was about styles, and the common wisdom was that Manny had the style to threaten Floyd.
So here we are, just hours after the “Fight Of The Century” and the world … read more
FLOYD MAYWEATHER
“He’s [Manny Pacquiao] is a hell of a fighter. I take my hat off to him. Now I see why he’s one of the guys that are at the pinnacle of the sport of boxing.
“I knew he was going to push it and win some rounds. He had some moments in the fight, but I kept him on the outside, I was a smart fighter. I wasn’t getting hit with a lot of shots until I sat in the pocket, that’s when he would land a lot of shots.
What an anti- climax. Like your poor marquee fights of the past that didn’t quite live up to the hype (De La Hoya v Trinidad), Mayweather v Pacquiao and the pro-Manny house in Vegas left very disappointed tonight (or this morning here in the UK) when we witnessed a good guy vs bad guy fight where the better boxer – not the better human being – won out.