![]() ![]() Yet even by that dreary standard with its lowest possible bar, Floyd Mayweather, Jr., is a deplorable lout. Bums have always controlled the agenda, supported by a system that’s intrinsically corrupt. But over the game’s long annals they’ve been out-numbered by the bums. Those who have redeemed the dodge with class and courage are highly honored and well remembered. So when odd chaps come along who seem normal and conduct themselves with dignity, they stand out. It’s a brutal business that has always attracted brutal characters. A high percentage has always been ugly characters. You’ll be thankful we’ll not be offering more silly comparisons to “the good old days” on this matter.īoxers have always been rowdies. Thirty years ago this fight would have been lucky to get second billing on a Vegas card featuring a Leonard, Hagler, Duran, Hearns, or Benitez at the top of the card. But there have been plenty of better, more dramatic, more intense, more artistic and driven matches featuring more intriguing characters than these two. Granted, not all fighters would have been. The justification for all this was the promise of an event that would be epic, but the premise was preposterous for neither Mayweather nor Pacquiao were equal to such a burden. As for the fighters, they got to carve up at least $300 million, another all-time record for a one-night stand or, if you prefer, rip off. Maybe all that adds up to another billion? Who knows? Tens of millions changed hands on bets. The wealth was spread around nice, you should be glad to hear. All the hustlers from the pimps on the street corners to the purveyors of the $1,600 a night hotel rooms made fabulous scores, too. They say “the drop,” which is the extra money big events draw to the gaming tables, may have been historic. ![]() On top of that was all the street dough that made the weekend one of the fattest in the annals of Vegas, a town that knows a lot about The Big Hit. When every grubby nickel is accounted for, it will likely prove to have netted a total “gate” of well over a billion bucks, obviously including all that cable money, which is what most pumped up the fiasco. Maybe by the measure that counts to those who had a stake in it – the almighty buck – it was humongous, but to the rest of us, it was a big flat yawn. Mayweather-Pacquiao should only be remembered as The Big Rip Off. For some few of us, it’s hard to know whether to cheer or weep. Instead, it may have been the final straw for this once painfully noble but now pathetic and pointless pretense.īoxing is dead! We need only bury it. Rationalizing the folly of it will be required and that will be neither easy nor pleasant.īilled as The Fight of the Century, Mayweather versus Pacquiao was supposed to be the Big Bang sure to revive boxing. The sporting world would much prefer to little note and not long remember the nonsense that took place in ever lusting Las Vegas the first weekend of May. That in the end it turns out to have given new and precious meaning to the timeless adage, “much ado about nothing,” is a mild surprise. From the start it had “con-job” written all over it. This being the Age of Wretched Excess, wherein hyperbole and mindless ostentation are givens as openers, you knew there was no way there was ever going to be anything remarkable about the big boxing fandango in the desert. ![]()
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