Yesterday was your Floyd Mayweather/Manny Pacquiao-free edition of Quick Jabs. This is your all- Pacquiao/Mayweather Quick Jabs. Seriously, there’s just so much talk about this fight that I could write a post a day about it. So, this week, and maybe in future weeks, I hit you with the week’s highlights.
Formal negotiations began Monday for the welterweight fight, targeted for May 1. Neither Bob Arum of Top Rank nor Richard Schaefer of Golden Boy Promotions are talking to the media about this, at least on the record, so there’s not much word of how things went. However, some source who wouldn’t speak for attribution said talks would begin anew Monday, so I guess they haven’t worked everything out…
UNLESS THEY ALREADY HAVE! Teddy Atlas and Bert Sugar said this week that it was already a done deal, Pacquiao-Mayweather. Sugar, it should be noted, said the same thing to me off the record last week, and he works for HBO. (Hey, if he’s going to say it in public, I can break our “off the record” deal.) I find this very amusing, if true. It means all that’s really happening is pantomime…
Although I guess there are some issues they’d have to resolve, like whose name to put first. I’ll be calling it Pacquiao-Mayweather, for the most part, until the issue is resolved, as I’m of the mind that Pacquiao is the bigger star AND the pound-for-pound boss. When I’m putting together my preview pieces, I tend to go by some mix of stardom and ranking when I’m writing the headlines and deciding whose name to put first (the victor of the first fight always gets top billing in a rematch — why do we always call it Castillo-Corrales, by the way?)…
And I guess another issue to resolve is where to put it. The major candidates to start were Las Vegas, Dallas, New Orleans and New York, in about that order of probability. New York is out, since the taxes are too high there for Arum’s tastes. I like New Orleans the most, personally — the area needs a boost, and it has a good fight tradition, and certain taxes might be waived to neutralize the tax advantages offered by Dallas and Vegas. Dallas has that massive, massive stadium, but I greatly dislike the idea because of the man at the right, Worst Referee Ever Laurence Cole, and other inept Texas officials. Vegas is fine. They’re thinking of building a 30,000 person outdoor stadium for the event…
Thomas Hauser has his latest in-the-dressing-room piece out, this time on Pacquiao-Miguel Cotto. Its intro is a bit long, but once he gets into the dressing room, it’s all good — fun anecdotes like Pacquiao hangers-on hiding in the shower during the security sweeps. And the closing segment of the piece — very good…
The New York Times has kept up its attention on boxing since Pacquiao-Cotto. In this piece, the most interesting aspect, actually, is Hauser (who’d castigated the Times for its lack of boxing coverage, ironically) comparing Pacquiao-Mayweather to Muhammad Ali-Joe Frazier I. I think that’s a tad beyond how big it is — to me, the most appropriate comparisons are Sugar Ray Leonard-Marvin Hagler or Leonard-Tommy Hearns, but there are some commonalities with Ali-Frazier. The biggest overlap is that there are two men with a claim to the throne, at heavyweight for Ali-Frazier and pound-for-pound for Pacquiao-Mayweather…
There are people out there who don’t like HBO taking too heavy a hand with making fights happen, but I think everyone probably is thrilled that HBO is insisting on Pacquiao-Mayweather. It is the fight that has to happen, and more than anyone else, HBO can force it to. They hold the major purse strings, and they can just refuse any other fight for Pacquiao and Mayweather than each other…
I’ve had this thought that maybe the only reason Mayweather is taking this fight is because he’s underestimating Pacquiao. He keeps talking about how Pacquiao got outboxed by Erik Morales, as if the one-handed, defensively-challenged featherweight who lost to Morales five years ago is anything like the two-handed, fairly complete welterweight who just demolished Cotto. We all know Mayweather isn’t usually interested in challenging himself. Maybe he doesn’t think he is. Shhhhhh. Nobody tell him. He might pull out of the fight…
You know how Floyd Mayweather, Sr. (and a few other irresponsible souls) have accused Pacquiao of taking steroids? He passed his latest test — again. Can we knock off this talk, until somebody brings forth an accusation backed up by any evidence or inside knowledge?…
David Mayo, the reporter who’s covered Mayweather more than probably anyone else, has his own take on Mayweather’s villainous behavior, vis-a-vis whether it’s an act or all natural (in a Ring piece worth reading for its take on the good vs. evil storyline of Pacquiao-Mayweather):
David Mayo, a frequent RING contributor who covers boxing for Mayweather’s hometown Grand Rapids Press, knows the fighter who calls himself “Money” quite well and believes there’s a fair amount of separation between the public and private personas.
“A great deal of it is an act,” Mayo said. “I think he’s fallen into that character in a public way where sometimes he has a problem getting out of it, but certainly I don’t think anyone who knows him believes that’s exactly who he is. He just seems to fall into a role just like an actor does.”
So is there any part of Mayweather that has misgivings about playing the bad guy and wishes people would love him instead?
“I think maybe that used to be the case, but I believe he’s completely indifferent to it now,” Mayo said. “I think he realizes we’re not looking for an altar boy; we’re looking for a guy who wins fights and creates controversy and can back up what he says, and to date he’s been able to back up what he says”…
There’s a bit of a campaign to get SI to make Pacquiao its Sportsman of the Year, but it might be too late in the coming. Word is Derek Jeter is going to get the nod, and while you can make a case for Jeter’s CAREER being underrated, I don’t think his 2009 was better than Pacquiao’s, either inside the ring or outside it. And I’m not saying this just because I’m a boxing homer. When people were talking up Pacquiao for the title in 2008, I would have voted for Michael Phelps…
Measure of Pacquiao’s fame (and the size of Pacquiao-Mayweather) outside boxing circles, part 1: When people in football — the sport America is just sooooo preoccupied with, for reasons I don’t quite understand — get in a feud now, they compare it to Pacquiao-Mayweather….
Measure of Pacquiao’s fame outside boxing circles, part 2: The Sports Guy talked about him. (h/t friend of the site Alex) Don’t underestimate the influence The Sports Guy has as a tastemaker in sports. Here’s what he said, in part (and I recommend reading the rest of what he wrote in his mailbag on Pacquiao-Mayweather, too):
I made the decision during Pacman’s glorious evisceration of Miguel Cotto that he finally had reached the exalted “I Don’t Care Who You Are Fighting, I Am Watching It Live & That’s That” status, which puts him in the following company: Ali, Sugar Ray Leonard, Tyson. My own personal Mount Rushmore. Pacquiao hit Tiger/Federer status about a year ago, and nobody cared. That’s why he needs the Mayweather fight so badly. We’ve seen dominant pound-for-pound guys these past two decades, but nobody with finishing power anything like what Pacman has. He’s like a coked-up Aaron Pryor, only without the coke. Insane. If he’s fighting, I am watching.
Measure of Pacquiao’s fame outside boxing circles, part 3: When you’re in a McDonald’s commercial, it’s game over. (Although this isn’t the only McDonald’s commercial he’s been in, FWIW — it’s just the one that posted most recently, and has been circulating on the Interwebs.)
