The Pacquiao vs. Mayweather Debacle: Five Things We Learned

1. Money doesn’t talk.

The consensus among observers was that there was just too much money involved for the fight not to happen.

The fighters were being guaranteed an equal split of $50 million upfront, plus a percentage of pay-per-view revenues that could have raised the pot to somewhere in the neighborhood of $80 million.

That’s an awfully nice neighborhood to drive past without pulling over for a paltry 36-minutes to collect the large, overstuffed moneybags loitering on the street corners.

I guess money doesn’t always talk. Or maybe it does, but sometimes there are just so many idiots yelling and screaming around it that no one is able to hear it.

2. There needs to be a single overseeing body in the sport of boxing.

Manny is promoted by both Top Rank and Golden Boy Promotions. Floyd is promoted by Mayweather Promotions, but had authorized Golden Boy to negotiate the fight on his behalf.

So one of Manny’s promoters was negotiating on behalf of Manny’s other promoter who was negotiating on behalf of Floyd.

The fighters haggled over the specifics of adding a regulation to a fight overseen by a commission that has no authority to supervise or prohibit such a change in the regulations.

And we wonder why we’re left without a mega-fight, feeling like we’ve been simultaneously kicked in the teeth, gut, and jewel sack by a three-legged freak.

Power in the sport of boxing needs to be in the hands of a single organization—not splintered among promoters, state athletic commissions, and miscellaneous sanctioning bodies.

3. That Manny Pacquiao is one popular dude—and not just in the Philippines.

If Barack Obama is sarcastically referred to as the Messiah, then Manny Pacquiao just may be God himself. And I’m not sure, but I think that would make Floyd Mayweather the devil.

I don’t know much about culture in the Philippines, but Filipino pride is a pretty amazing thing. That is a people who stick together and know what they believe.

Now I think I understand why Manny would rather pass up a $40 million payday than give a teaspoon of his blood—he could get twice that on Ebay.

4. There are some seriously passionate, angry, and insane fans out there.

Which one do you hate—Pedquiao or Gayweather?

Give the wrong answer to the person who asks that question and you might as well have hocked a fat loogie into the urn containing their grandmother’s ashes.

Let’s just get it over with and have all of the Mayweather fans wear red, the Pacquiao supporters wear blue, and start flashing signs, getting affiliation tats, and doing drive-bys.

It’s like we woke up one morning and found ourselves in a Jerry Springer boxing-themed Twilight Zone.

5. No matter how many times we, the fans, get screwed by the sport, we keep coming back.

Being a boxing fan is like being the wife of a mobster—you’re associated with a business filled with scumbags, you know you’re going to be cheated on, and you’re committed to it for life.

Having a fight the magnitude of Pacquiao vs. Mayweather wind up in a toe-tag is more than just another black eye for boxing—it’s the sport’s equivalent of Riddick Bowe having his scrotum used as a speed bag by Andrew Golata.

But, as always, we’ll stagger back to our corners, leer at the ring card girl, and somehow find a way to answer the bell for the next round.