FIVE YEARS FOR BOUT SANS DRAMA
Las Vegas, NV-Saturday night Floyd Mayweather (48-0, 26 KOs) notched what many will consider the most important victory of his career, keeping his undefeated record intact. Unfortunately the fight itself wasn’t memorable.
MAYWEATHER VS PACQUIAO
Both fighters will take their share of the blame. Predictably after the fight Manny Pacquiao (57-6-2, 38 KOS),a Filipino congressman and superstar, had excuses. “I hurt my shoulder”, said Pacquiao, in the post fight press conference, referring the an injury that he had suffered in training. Pacquiao also suggested that he thought he won the fight. Although he fought well in spots, judges Bert Clements and Dave Moretti appeared to have the correct scores of 116-112 or 8-4 in favor of Mayweather.
MAYWEATHER CLAIMED INJURIES AS WELL
MANNY HITS FLOYD
Floyd Mayweather himself stated that he had hurt arms and injured hands going into the bout. It was clear that both fighters were closer to filing for Social Security than being near their prime. The fight showed the slippage in both fighters. In some cases that slippage can make for a great fight, here it made for one that was lackluster.
FLOYD CONTENT TO BOX, MANNY CONTENT TO WATCH
For all of Floyd Sr’s bravado before the fight that his son was going for a knockout was obviously just talk. While Floyd had trouble with Manny in a few rounds, he was mostly controlling the action from the outside. When they got inside, he tied Manny up. Pacquiao came forward for the majority of the bout and with some early success but overall he couldn’t cut the ring off. In the later rounds when trying to mount an attack and trap Floyd on the ropes, Floyd was normally able to find the escape route back to the center of the ring. Mayweather, being the consummate defensive wizard, was content on just using his jab to control the action, but at no point in the fight did he attempt to sit down on his shots. What most people saw was an overpriced sparring match.
FLOYD STILL NO RISK TAKER
Mayweather is one of the greatest boxers of all-time. But the key word here is “boxer”. He doesn’t like get into fights and does his best to limit the action. That being said, one would suspect that he will get a brunt of the blame for the bout being less than scintillating. But what did people expect? The onus was on Manny Pacquiao to press the action from the get go. Unfortunately he was more content to box then he was to try and turn it into a slugfest. As was customary Floyd used a lot of movement in which more than likely frustrated the Filipino who obviously was more concerned with pleasing the crowd than Floyd. But as Mayweather said in a featured video before the fight that he fights for “himself”. Manny fights for his country.
GOOD OR BAD FOR BOXING’S FUTURE?
One has to wonder if casual fans of the sport will come back and pay for another PPV event after what many will describe as an unappealing match. While there were some bursts of action especially early on, it became anti-climatic in the end.
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Kevin Perry
MAWEATHER-PACQUIAO A “SUPER” SNOOZER