Floyd Mayweather vs. Manny Pacquiao Results: Boxing Is Megafight's Big Winner

A lot of things have been or are going to be said and written about Floyd Mayweather Jr.'s unanimous-decision win over Manny Pacquiao, but the one thing that needs to be brought to the surface is that boxing comes out looking better than either of the two fighters. 

No one's opinion of Mayweather or Pacquiao radically changed following the outcome of the fight. The word on Twitter from a lot of fans was the bout was simply boring, which Yahoo Sports' Dan Wetzel says shows the misrepresentation of what Mayweather does in the ring:

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For the 16,507 who paid big bucks to be here in person and the even bigger audience that tuned in on pay-per-view, the ones that pay attention to boxing only so often, this may have been a boring fight.

Fair enough. But this wasn’t so much a boring fight as a Floyd Mayweather fight, and you can label it dull if you wish, rail that he just doesn’t excite the masses with the offense everyone craves, but this is exactly what was likely to happen.

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The raw numbers from the fight suggest that there wasn't a lot of action over the course of 36 minutes in the ring. According to CompuBox numbers, via Sports Illustrated's Chris Mannix, Mayweather and Pacquiao combined to land 229 punches:

To put that in perspective, in Pacquiao's previous fight with Chris Algieri, he landed 229 punches on his own, per ESPN's Dan Rafael. 

Pacquiao's camp has come out and said he was fighting Mayweather with an injured shoulder, which undoubtedly played a role in this lackluster performance, though it's impossible to say if he would have won at full strength. 

Yet with all these things working against the fight in hindsight, there's still endless discussion, debate and conversation about the battle. Fans wanted this matchup to be an all-time classic because Mayweather and Pacquiao are the two best fighters of their generation. 

Unfortunately, sports rarely work out the way they are supposed to. You can't plan for something that doesn't have a script. 

Boxing is a unique sport in that it's not a unified whole the way, say, Major League Baseball and the National Football League are. It's a sport in which the fighters have all the power, from who they challenge to where and when they fight. 

Mayweather and Pacquiao have made a lot of money in their careers by being able to promote themselves. Both men figure to make out like bandits after their first head-to-head matchup—reportedly at least $300 million with Mayweather getting the higher end of a 60-40 split, according to John Branch of The New York Times. 

There's been a lot of discussion about boxing's place in the current sports landscape. Some would have you believe it's dying or on the verge of death. Yet how do those same people explain predictions of three million pay-per-view buys?

It's not just a Mayweather-Pacquiao fight that's bringing boxing back. In September 2013, ESPN's Darren Rovell noted a lot of major sports networks were increasing their coverage of the sport:

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The CBS Sports Network, which owns Showtime, has expanded its coverage, as has NBC Sports, which added a Main Events series in January. New entrant Fox Sports 1 debuted a Monday night series last month to join mainstay ESPN and its "Friday Night Fights" franchise.

As sports rights fees have skyrocketed, boxing has delivered from both a revenue and time-filling standpoint.

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Starting on March 7 this year, NBC Sports Network aired the first of 20 live Premier Boxing Champions events with Al Michaels hosting. 

There is more of a focus on boxing today than there has been since Mike Tyson was a superstar. Mayweather vs. Pacquiao may not have seemed like it was directly helping boxing because this was one of those rare once-in-a-lifetime events that everyone just wanted to be a part of. 

But think of this in a more abstract way. On a day in which there was a Game 7 in the NBA playoffs, the Kentucky Derby and NFL draft, it was impossible to turn on the television to ESPN, Fox Sports 1 or NBC Sports Network without seeing extensive coverage of a boxing match. 

Boxing's death is a great myth. It's still a niche sport that won't appeal to the masses like football, baseball or basketball, but there's still a loud and vocal audience that follows the sport and is steadily growing. 

Based on the expected returns for Mayweather vs. Pacquiao, as well as growing national television coverage, boxing came out of Saturday night looking as strong as it has in years.