(Please excuse these late comments of the Maweather vs Pacquiao fight. I have been sick.)
Several years ago, my mother, my wife Jeri and I went to a new BBQ joint in the high desert off the 15 freeway in Hesperia. The owner of the place stopped by our table to talk with us. He was a very nice guy. He proceeded to tell us we were going to his love his BBQ. It was the best in the United States. He went on and on about it. We hung on to his every word. We believed him. How lucky were we to have stopped in here. We were sufficiently excited and could not wait for our order. The prices were a bit high but good BBQ, is worth it. We waited, enjoying our iced tea and lemonade and eventually our order came.
Boy, were we ever gullible. Now, if the man had never said a word, we might have been semi content with what I feel was below standard BBQ, but after being sold a bill of goods (hype) proclaiming it as the best BBQ in the country, it was suddenly inedible. In a nutshell it was lousy. The place was out of business a few months later.
Well, that about sums up the fight. If it had not been billed as the “Fight of the Century” or if the fighters were not paid unprecedented millions, or if we were not asked to pay a higher PPV bill, or wait so long for the fight, we might have been able to see it as a regular good fight but juxtaposed against the mega hype, it was a lousy fight.
As far as I'm concerned the fight went the only way it could. Though I would have liked to seen Floyd Mayweather engage in a war, Manny Pacquiao never gave him cause to.
There was no high drama, no moment to look back at with excitement. There was nothing in this so called “Fight of the Century” to define the fight game for a new generations of boxing fans.
As for Pacquiao's surprising claim that he thought he won the fight. I'm not going to hate on him. No champion has been more gracious in victory or (in past losses) humble in defeat. He is allowed, or more to the point, deserves, a human moment. It's hard for an aggressive close up fighter to always see accurately what just took place. He isn't the first and he won't be the last to feel this way. It's that same tenacity and pride that takes a man to the pinnacle of his game that makes it hard to accept the losses later in his career, and like it or not, this is later in his career. What I don't accept are the claims of a shoulder injury. This was a “No Excuses” fight.
I cannot imagine any reason for a rematch but keep this in mind, “Screw me once, shame on you, screw me twice, shame on me”. I ordered the fight at the last minute but I will not pay 10 cents to see them fight again.
The real shame in all of this is that 5 years ago this actually might have been one of the great ones. It didn't happen and that as they say, is that.
