31.10.07 – By James Slater: Boring -verb; make somebody feel disinterested by being dull. Is the above verb an appropriate one for boxing’s current pound-for-pound king Floyd Mayweather Junior? Many people say Mayweather is a boring fighter. But is he really a fighter that “makes people feel disinterested by being dull?” I say no.
Let’s face it, how can any fan say they are disinterested by “Pretty Boy” when they are almost constantly talking about him? Either love him or loathe him, Floyd Mayweather brings out an opinion and an emotion from almost anybody with as much as a casual interest in the sport of boxing. How then, can the man be described as dull?
Okay, let’s not get too technical. Many fans feel Mayweather bores them in the ring, and it is to his overly cautious approach when fighting that they point to with regards to the disinterest they feel from the welterweight champion. But here, too, are these fans exaggerating when they call the unbeaten star a bore? If someone is truly bored by a fighter, they will simply cease to watch him – and, more importantly, they will cease paying to watch him. This has never looked like happening in Mayweather’s case. On the contrary, his fights do huge numbers. Case in point, his super fight with Oscar De La Hoya – which was a boxing match nearly everyone both saw, and then talked about. Why haven’t boxing fans stayed away in droves for Mayweather fights if he has been, and is, so boring? If anything, Mayweather has seen his fights get bigger and bigger.
That is simply something that doesn’t happen to a dull and boring fighter. The same thing is going to happen with “Pretty Boy’s” next fight, too – the one with a certain Mr. Hatton. How many fans does that fight make feel disinterested? Absolutely none, that’s how many.
No, Mayweather is not a boring fighter, at least not in the conventional meaning of the word. A truly boring fighter by definition, would be someone like Johnny Nelson, for one example. This guy was safety first in the ring and never drew much verbal interest, either negative or positive, from the fans – they simply didn’t care. Floyd Mayweather is nothing like Nelson, surely? What we really have with Mayweather is a controversial, not easy to understand, boxing master. To the fans who say they get bored watching him fight, I say fine; if watching a master at work as he produces a masterpiece is not your thing then so be it. And Floyd has given us some masterpieces during his career, hasn’t he? With his uncommon boxing brilliance, he has dazzled both his opponents and those amongst boxing fans who can appreciate, well, a masterpiece.
It’s not Mayweather’s fault if he is capable of winning fights so easily he makes the other guy look like nothing, and it’s not his fault he can win fights without being truly tested to the limit – therefore giving us fights with, according to his critics, no drama. Agreed, Floyd is not the guy to go see if you want a toe-to-toe tear-up. But neither was Willy Pep, or, most of the time at least, was Muhammad Ali. But who calls those two guys boring? And before anybody says it was Ali’s out-of-the-ring antics that kept us all so enthralled a lot of the time, isn’t it the same thing with Mayweather (barring the political stance, of course)?
The bottom line is, Floyd Mayweather keeps the boxing fans both talking and coming back for more. Just look at the number of comments that are left on articles written about him on this very website. Floyd also gets the fans debating. For if you either wish to see him triumph or fail in the ring, you have an opinion as to which outcome will occur come fight time. If a truly and utterly boring fighter were doing his stuff, the exact opposite would be the case and there would be nothing but empty seats and virtual silence.
Mayweather, however, be it from his supporters or his detractors, evokes interest. And excitement. The reigning pound-for-pound king is not boring, and we’ll all miss him when his fine career finally reaches its end.