By Jason Keidel
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Sure, boxing is largely buried in the back alleys of the sports pages and the moonlit hours of Tony Paige’s program. Unless, of course, Floyd Mayweather, Jr. or Manny Pacquiao is fighting. And, sadly, they have yet to fight each other.
But Pacquiao, half of the sport’s pyrotechnic power, fought in Macau, China on Saturday, whipping Chris Algieri over 12 rounds, including six knockdowns. While it would have been a nice narrative to see the native New Yorker upset the icon and insert himself as a modern-day Rocky — Sylvester Stallone was born in NYC, not Philly — it would not have served the long-term interest of the sport.
So in those violent, 36 minutes, the Filipino congressman who moonlights as a boxer — or is it the reverse? — retained his half of boxing’s symbolic, pound-for-pound belt.
Sadly, we have to deal in symbolism, because not one rumor regarding Mayweather and Pacquiao has materialized into something that boxing’s dwindling devotes can hang on to.
You can decide whether it’s because of decaying skills or dwindling Q Scores, but it’s obvious that neither Mayweather nor Pacquaio is epic enough on their own to support their stratospheric PPV prices. Just a replay of Pacquiao’s chainsaw demolition of the outmatched Algieri cost nearly $70 on my cable box.
They say site fees are boxing’s new business model. But there’s no way that charging China a tax to host a fight is closely commensurate to the well-over two million pay-per-view buys a fight between the sport’s only true monoliths can generate.
And while purists can wax poetic about Andre Ward, Gennady Golovkin, Vladimir Klitschko or some other constellation of consonants, few folks not named Jim Lampley really know about the more nuanced craftsmen who make up boxing’s emaciated star system.
All sports need stars. But boxing, an ardently solitary affair, lives on them. And one bedrock way to build them is to have the best fighters fighting each other.
It’s pretty obvious to everyone except the Floyd Fan Guy that the undefeated Mayweather is the primary reason that he and Pac-Man have yet to meet inside the squared circle. It probably also explains his own, evaporating PPV numbers.
Mayweather loves to assert his place atop sports’ aristocracy, yet also loves to claim his place as a plebeian who only wants to give the masses the fights they covet. If the latter were true, he would have signed to fight Pacquiao years ago. It not only would have given us a reason to watch boxing, but it also would have sated his lust for large bricks of cash, expanding line of luxury cars, mansions and yes men — all molecules in the “Money” moniker.
Seems simple enough. But nothing about boxing is simple, facile or logical. It makes you wonder when the sweet science became science fiction.
Follow Jason on Twitter @JasonKeidel.
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