Manny Pacquiao vs. Floyd Mayweather: Reasons This Has to Happen

Last Saturday I took the train down to MSG to cover Nonito Donaire's fight.

Over the course of the four hours or so leading up to Donaire's entrance, there might have been seven fights on the card that night, but nothing came close to generating the excitement of a look-a-like Manny Pacquiao dressed in a pink dress shirt and shades strolling down the stairs.

After the first person glimpsed him, the cheers started up. One-by-one we all looked away from the ring to see where the real action was going on. When the camera flashes erupted all over the place the roars followed. Then the Filipinos held up their flags and everybody stood to make out what the hell was going on. People started running down the aisle and across the row toward the fuss. Then the Manny cheers.

All of us who'd gone to the weigh-in on Friday had met the Manny-clone lurking around. Without the shades he bore a considerable resemblance, but nobody would seriously mistake him for Pacquiao at 40 feet. But with the shades and the cover of darkness in the arena, the Manny-clone stole the show.

You want to know how badly boxing needs Manny Pacquiao and Floyd Mayweather to happen? 

Even after everybody at MSG knew and was in on the fact that this was a Manny Pacquiao-clone, they still milked more excitement out of it than anything Bob Arum had arranged for them to enjoy in the ring. 

Without the Manny-clone that night, MSG had all the excitement of a flea market. 

The Big Bang

Where would you put Manny Pacquiao's importance if he was coming up in the last golden era? Would he be more important than Hearns or Duran or Leonard? 

Something just doesn't feel right about having Manny Pacquiao as the savior of the sport. 

This isn't to say it's any of Pacquiao's fault. He's great. He'll bring interest to the sport. General fans care about his fights. He's exciting. Instead of pretending or saying he fights for the fans, he actually takes on the fights that people most want to watch. Imagine that. He seems genuinely appreciative of having the opportunity to be a boxer in life, let alone a great champion. If you've ever been to one of his fights, you can feel an immediate difference to the energy he elicits from his audience. There's a conversation going on between him and his fans. They feed off each other. This is decidedly rare. He inspires millions. The crime rate in his home country is said to drop to zero while he fights. 

But is Manny Pacquiao going to end up being our generation's Muhammad Ali when all is said and done? 

My guess is that it will only point to all that's missing in our sport during this era. 

Which is why a fight like Pacquiao and Mayweather could spawn a new era for boxing by the interest their fight would generate. The great fighters of tomorrow might find, finally, some compelling reasons to head down to a gym to test themselves rather than picking up another sport. 

Champions in boxing, if you can believe it, used to mean something to people on the street. It would be nice to think there are still some fights that could create a resurgence of that sentiment. 

Pacquiao and Mayweather should be the genesis of a new direction. 

The Heel

Mayweather vs. Pacquiao, for a while now, has been the most polarizing issue in boxing. Outside of boxing, the inability for the supply to match up with the demand unites most people in seeing what a cesspool of corruption and incompetence boxing must be. 

Mayweather and Pacquiao aren't spring chickens. Apart from the wear and tear of being in the hurt business, training as diligently as they both do catches up to you. When Mayweather is off from boxing, he's still training four hours a day. Pacquiao's latter career has left a heap of fallen champions in his wake. Both boxers are at an age where the accumulation of damage sustained in and out of the ring take their toll. All that roadwork wearing down the joints and knees. The impact of all those punches thrown in the gym crippling the hands, tightening up the shoulders and back. Rocky Marciano retired after the stench of the gym overwhelmed him. 

Our window of opportunity is closing fast. The reasons I've inventoried above are just the tangible issues at hand between aging athletes entering their twilight. 

Floyd has a habit of courting trouble outside the ring. This isn't a man short of distractions or controversy. Something outside Floyd's control could as easily spoil any chance at a big fight as an injury. 

The setup of these two fighters is as good as boxing is likely to see for a while. Great heel, great hero. They match up beautifully. What other fight could generate half the interest? What other fight that you could set up for the next five years could remotely capture the imagination if you had total power to call the shots? (aside from the obvious Bob Arum vs. Don King senior-circuit mud bath showdown for the interracial world promoter championship).

They've gotta make this one happen. And soon. If it goes between their fingers people are unlikely to forget. Our era will be defined by the futility of the sport to save itself when it most needed to.  

Bob Arum

While I was at the weigh-in for Donaire, I overheard some older reporters lamenting how covering these events just wasn't half as much as fun as when Don King was doing it. 

And the obvious comes to mind when you hear things like that, Don King is a portable event by virtue of his very presence. Bob Arum isn't. While he may be the most important man in any boxing room he enters, I doubt if anyone will miss him when someone else takes over as resident czar of the sport. 

Arum's feud against the UFC is an interesting example of how his denial of UFC's appeal speaks to everything that's wrong about how he markets his product. While competition could compel him to demonstrate with better and better cards and match ups how boxing is flat out a better quality drug than the UFC, instead he's dismissive of anyone enjoying the UFC and insinuates some homophobic slurs against them. 

Classy. 

The UFC has been cleverly marketed toward fans. When Anderson Silva easily won a recent contest but failed to put on much of a show, he was reprimanded by Dana White. Can you imagine something similar happening in boxing? Can you imagine a promoter publicly issuing a statement that was an honest assessment of his product and brand? 

The perception is that Bob Arum rules boxing in accordance with what best suits his interests. Nobody really has any ability to pressure him into operating any other way. Fans have no recourse. There's no governing body. The titles themselves are meaningless and just in such abundance to rip off the champions with the sanctioning fees and assist promoters with advertising "title" fights. 

But you'd have an easier time fixing congress than you would a system as entrenched in its ways as boxing. 

That being said, Pacquiao vs. Mayweather is the most obvious step in the right direction. And if you get it done soon, guess what, a rematch wouldn't hurt either.  Maybe that spills over into a rubber match. 

Imagine that. 

Manny Pacquiao's Legacy

How many more fights are in Manny Pacquiao? 

How many more fights are in Floyd Mayweather?

If they do fight and the spectacle lives up to the hype, what then? What if we get something even worse than Ortiz-Mayweather? 

At present, everything is left to the imagination. While it seems as if Pacquiao has been far less reluctant to press for this fight, if the two never face each other, it's far likely that Floyd's legacy would be the worse for it. 

Where is the defining fight for Floyd? Where's the chemistry that we always demand of the great champions who are forever remembered? It's not there. 

In Pacquiao's case, it's been a far better ride. I think the main reason is pretty clear: he's given more. Mayweather's been content to take more. He's taken those titles he's got. He earned them every step of the way. But he didn't have any interest in giving anymore than was necessary to do it.

Pacquiao has taken risks. And why he's taken those risks is what he'll be remembered for. Even if he loses against Mayweather, he might very well win even more fans in how he fought. 

Mayweather's Legacy

Early on in Mayweather's career, he took big chances with his choice of opponents. People forget this far too often in their attempts to belittle him or justify their inherent dislike of Floyd. 

In my opinion, the most fascinating fight of Mayweather's career took place against Castillo in their first fight. Regardless of whether you conclude he won or lost (he lost, don't kid yourselves), Mayweather's never had a closer fight. It was hugely gutsy of him to take the fight and, more importantly, take the rematch where Floyd left no doubts about who was the better man in the ring.

That's what champions are supposed to do.

Floyd knows that.

Right now Floyd has the ticket but he refuses to take the ride. And guess what? Nothing he's done or will ever do has a hope in hell of defining his legacy more than him accepting or ultimately refusing to fight Manny Pacquiao.

It's this fate that separates and distinguishes the careers of Pacquiao and Floyd.    

James Toney

Finally, allow the greatest orator since Hamlet to settle any lingering confusion you may have had about the ramifications of Mayweather and Pacquiao not getting it on. 

If you ask me, why HBO hasn't hired him on as a color commentator instead of Roy Jones Jr. brand of arresting stupidity is a vastly more perplexing mystery than anything to do with how they get the carmel in the Cadbury bar. 

James Toney should be distilled and sold as an alternative to anti-depressants. The man is just more fun than anyone has any right to be. 

And if you disagree with his point of view, please feel free to take it up with him personally provided you film the exchange and send me a copy.