Floyd Mayweather Jr.: The Biggest Loser of Pacquiao Vs. Clottey

The verdict is officially in.

While the boxing history books will remember the first-ever boxing match at the Dallas Cowboys Stadium as a 12-round unanimous decision by Manny Pacquiao, the Fighting Pride of the Philippines, over Ghana's Joshua Clottey, the real loser of this match is the missing ingredient to what could have been one of the fights of the century.

That loser, of course, is Floyd Mayweather Jr.

How can a big, major event get overshadowed drastically by the college postseason circus known as March Madness? Simple. Just cry foul on an unfounded accusation.

But let's make this clear once again. For the record, Manny Pacquiao never doped. In fact, every State Athletic Commission out there can establish stringent WADA-esque post-match testing, and still the naysayers will see not even a sliver of a banned substance.

This was nothing more than a blatant, successful attempt to chicken out of a fight that he probably would not win.

You see, Pacquiao is to boxing as Lance Armstrong is to cycling: those who want to see proof that the epitome of greatness in his sport did in fact cheat will continue to be disappointed in their endless substance hunts.

It's a delusion that can only be cured by a simple acceptance: neither of them doped, every one of them played the game clean, and every one of them won through the only legal substance allowed: a balanced diet combined with hours of training and conditioning.

This goes back to Mayweather. Simply put: Junior missed out. He missed out bad. One would think that Mayweather would have at least taken a round or two, but speculations are speculations.

Maybe the outcome could have been different. Or it could have been the same decision, or even a knockout at the hands of the Pac-Man that could potentially send him to his retirement for good.

Instead, the sellout crowd in Dallas saw a tall Ghanian fighter in Joshua Clottey take his beating like the challenger he would be. The Clottey supporters must have been holding out hope after trainer Freddie Roach assured his brightest student of the relatively low degree of difficulty.

And as Mayweather prepares for his May 1st bout with Shane Mosley, one may reckon that at the back of his mind the decision to pull out of what would have been the biggest fight of his life made him the real loser of the Pacquiao-Clottey showdown on the 13th of March.