Loser in the Mayweather-Pacquiao Fight? The Viewers

Actually, I did not see it, and to be honest I was barely even aware it was going on, but this guy says it was just terrible.

Mayweather vs. Pacquiao: the uber-bout that wasn’t. The so-called fight of the century was pay-per-snooze, a complete waste of everyone’s time and money -- except in a boxing community now rolling in obscene amounts of cash, surely in disbelief they fooled us rubes again.

...

But we ignored all this because we wanted the fight to be something greater than it was. We attached meaning to it when this was clearly a payout fight, at best. (Floyd even admitted as much.) Oh, they wanted to win, but this hardly evoked the memories of Ali, Frazier, Foreman, Sugar Ray, The Hitman and Hagler fighting brawls that would land them in hospitals for belts that defined them as athletes. This was just glorified sparring....

They thought that the "whoosh" made by Pacquiao’s missed punches and the crowd noise that followed would fool us into thinking this was a real bout, not robbery with the press of a PPV button. They were selling a lie and we were all too happy to buy into it.

Boxing is dead and Mayweather-Pacquiao killed it. Never again will people shell out $100 to watch two old men grab at each other for 36 minutes.

Unless there’s a rematch. Maybe that’s the one that’ll be different.

This guy agrees re: all the terribleness.

Apparently -- I know nothing about any of this, so when I say "apparently," I mean "someone else told me this" -- apparently Mayweather is a great boxer, as in, the actual boxing skill of boxing, which means he wins on points, and not on actually hitting people. Apparently the fight consisted of little more than Mayweather putting up an impregnable defense with his better boxing skills and much longer reach, and then occasionally throwing powder-puff punches just to get the judges to award him points for making contact.

Many people are saying "MMA won the fight," mixed martial arts being the major competitor to boxing -- and the rising competitor to boxing, and, actually, I think, the actually-more-popular-and-has-been-for-years fighting sport competitor to boxing.

When I first heard of this fight a month ago, and heard it would be the most lucrative fight ever, I actually assumed it was a UFC fight. I was surprised to hear it was boxing.

Oh well.

You know who knows how to stage a fight? CNN, that's who. They've had a great run of arranging, promoting, and cashing in on a series of high-profile fights between cops and "protesters."

posted by Ace at 07:43 PM

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