Mayweather vs. Pacquiao: Highlights of Boxing's Big Night

On Saturday night, younger sports fans finally had the opportunity to learn something that has been true since the era of James Figg in the 1720s: No sporting event, or entertainment event of any kind, is bigger than the biggest of prizefights.

Over the past 300 years, boxing has gone through ups and downs and been declared dead more times than Jason Voorhees and Michael Myers combined. But when the right two fighters finally come together to compete, the civilized world invariably stops to pay attention.

The rich and famous came to Las Vegas in droves to watch Floyd Mayweather Jr. battle Manny Pacquiao. Ticket prices and hotel rooms swelled for the weekend, well beyond the means of a regular, lunch-bucket boxing fan.

This was a fight that all fans have longed for. But live, it was very much an event for the one percent. 

McCarran International Airport in Las Vegas was packed wing-to-wing with private jets on Saturday night. Inside the MGM Grand Garden Arena, Hollywood royalty such asClint Eastwood and Robert De Niro rubbed shoulders with power players from the music industry such as Jay Z and Sean Combs and sports legends such as Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson and Tom Brady. 

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For the rich, there wasn't a hotter place to be seen. 

Ultimately, those outside-the-ring moments will probably be the highlights that history remembers. Few fights could have lived up to such hype. Mayweather and Pacquiao certainly failed to do so.

For serious boxing fans, the action between the two biggest boxing stars of this generation came as little surprise. It was a matchup between a brilliant defensive technician and an explosive offensive fighter, which always has the potential to be a stalemate.

Both fighters are now beyond their primes, but Mayweather's skill set has clearly aged better. He was able to almost completely neutralize Pacquiao's ability to attack and force the fight to take place at the slower, more calculated pace the pound-for-pound king prefers.

In terms of pure excitement, the highlight of the fight happened at the opening bell. The crowd roared as both men moved into the center of the ring. But Mayweather set the tone for the fight in that first frame, establishing the distance and controlling the tempo with his jab and lateral movement.

Before the bell for the end of the first round, Mayweather had landed two solid right hands that Pacquiao seemed to remember for the rest of the fight.

Pacquiao certainly had his moments. In Round 4, he stunned Mayweather with a nice left hand just inside the 1:30 mark. He drove Mayweather into the ropes and let loose with a flurry that brought the crowd alive.

But Mayweather came out for Round 5 and once again took control, halting Pacquiao's forward advancement with his tricky right hands.

Round 6 saw Pacquiao's last substantial rally. He swarmed Mayweather with an aggressive flurry early in the round. Mayweather was able to block and slip everything Pacquiao threw in that barrage, but the aggression itself allowed Pacquiao to take control of the tempo and land a solid left-hand shot a beat later.

Another nice flurry from Pacquiao along the ropes allowed him to secure Round 6 at about the 1:10 mark.

But the second half of the fight was almost exclusively about Mayweather dictating its terms, out-throwing and out-landing Pacquiao to an almost shocking degree.

Bullit Marquez/Associated Press

Mayweather showed uncharacteristic aggression in Round 11, launching two heavy right hands inside the first 30 seconds and closing out the frame with a wild swing and miss as his aggression drove Pacquiao into retreat.

In the 12th and final round, the fight ended with more of a whimper than the bang that might have been expected. Pacquiao seemed to lack the energy to even pursue the big punch he needed to save a last-minute victory.

In boxing, there will always be at least a little bit of tension before the scorecards are read. But in this case, the judges merely confirmed what any unbiased fan already knew. Dave Moretti found it 118-110 for Mayweather, with Glenn Feldman and Burt Clements both scoring 116-112.

While it was not the rock 'em-sock 'em war casual fans hoped to see, for serious boxing fans, it has to be viewed as a fight with historical importance and value. It settled, at last, the biggest debate in the sport over the past decade.

Boxing is definitely gaining important traction in 2015. But realistically, it could be many years before the sport sees another night as big as this one.

But we will see one again. Boxing is back and will be back again; it always has been and always will be.