Hey boxing, quit hittin' yourself!

What a way to kick off your day.

I woke up this morning to read that the dream fight between Manny Pacquiao and Floyd Mayweather Jr. was about to be just that – only a dream. I felt like the naïve college girl who couldn’t avoid falling for and sleeping with jerk-off frat boys.
 
Not again. I thought you’d changed boxing.

After almost two decades of missing out on super bouts, like Tyson vs. Jones Jr., the sport seemed to be getting it. It wasn’t about money…well…it wasn’t all about money.

Boxing was starting to wipe the dollar bills from its eyes and gave fans great matchups like Mayweather vs. De La Hoya and Pacquiao vs. De La Hoya – fights that you would line up playing Fight Night on the Playstation but never thought they would actually happen.

The promise of Mayweather vs. Pacquiao was about to shoot the sport into a new golden age. Instead, it has pissed off a lot of fight fans as well as gave many casual spectators a bad taste in their mouths
 
(You want a bunch of prickly pears? Try talking smack in our boxing forum today. Those guys are dying for a fight.)

Now, I don’t agree with the people who say boxing is dead and MMA is the wave of the future. That’s like comparing hockey to broomball (WTF is broomball, you ask?). Yeah, both are played on ice but they are completely different sports.

Boxing will survive this black eye like it survived a dark age earlier in the decade. And hopefully, by the good graces of Gamblor – the almighty gambling deity – both sides will come to their senses and give the people the show they deserve. And hopefully not 15 years down the road when both fighters can’t punch a hole in a wet paper bag.

Until boxing starts putting money and pride aside, the sport will continue to deliver low blows to fans, bettors and itself.

Quit hittin’ yourself, quit hittin’ yourself, quit hittin’ youself…

Boxing may have needed this fight, but you know, a part of me feared that the build up would have exceeded the excitement in the ring on fight night. I'm not sure I'm THAT disappointed that this one isn't going off.  At nights end we would've had an undisputed LB-4-LB king, but that's about it IMO. I understand the need to see the 2 best fighters in the world going at it. There is definitely a time and place for that, but I'm not so sure it was now. The state the sport currently resides in can in no way afford an enormous failure. It needs to be producing fights that keep the people coming back....keep them itching for more. Can you imagine if all the efforts put forth in promoting this blockbuster led to PPV buys that exceeded what they were anticipating and then it all be for not ??  It could have happened with this fight....EASILY. Mayweather isn't going to stand in the middle of the ring (even as the bigger man) and gamble on whether his hands are as fast as Manny's. It's just not his style, and he's certainly not going to change what's worked for him his whole career just because he's making a bunch of money. 

Styles make fights and I never liked the matchup in this fight. Producing a fight that people would talk about for a long time was probably not in the cards here (Although, I highly doubt any fight involving "Money May" would be one for the archives). Boxing stands to gain more by producing and then reproducing fights like Pacquiao/Cotto Pacquiao/Marquez Pacquiao/Morales. Even to the average fight fan these are fun to watch and draw much needed positive publicity to the sport.

Instead, here we have two high IQ guys as far as ring generalship goes, both tryng to get the other to conform to their style as the fight progresses. Trust me, I'm as big a Manny fan as there is and there is no way he would be as aggressive in this fight as he was in his previous 3. In fact, I think you saw it a little bit in the Cotto fight where Manny realized he was in the ring with a world class athlete and his speed advantage was somewhat neutralized early on. It wasn't until he figured out that Cotto couldn't hurt him that he exploited Cotto's defensive weaknesses.  Manny is a smart fighter. Let me say that again, "Manny is one of the smartest fighters that has ever entered the squared-circle". And Floyd isn't far behind. The ring intelligence of both ironically would've served to slow this fight down.

I just didn't see it as compelling of a matchup as people were being led to believe. What I saw playing out early in the fight was Manny applying pressure periodically from all kinds of goofy, unorthadox angles (like he always does) and Floyd "shoulder rolling"  (like he always does) all while in retreat waiting to exploit a gap in Pacquiao's defense before firing a counter straight right. But the overriding factor that would've come more evident as the fight moved into the middle rounds is Manny's low connect rate. There is no denying that PBF has the best defense (defensive speed is unparalleled) the sport has seen in the last decade and this fight would have further proven that. So you see where I'm going with this........Manny's low connect rate coupled with PBF's low punch output could have potentially produced a dud. Yeah, there's always the possibility that we could've seen a few closing round flurries where both fighters let their hands go and potentially witnessed an unexpected spectacular knockout. But again, not a very high probability.

For whatever reasons we will ultimately be feed through the media as to why this fight didn't go down, I don't think the boxing world should regret it not happening. Just my opionion.