10 Reasons Why You Need To Watch Mayweather Vs Pacquiao
Believe the hype.
The biggest events in sport don’t come around very often.
The football World Cup Final takes place but once every four years, likewise the Olympic Games, Winter Olympics and Rugby World Cup. Golf and tennis both host four Majors a year, and other annual sporting highlights include the Champions League final, the NBA playoffs and the Super Bowl.
And then there’s boxing.
The sweet science has clearly soured in recent decades as natural athletes who might previously have set foot in a boxing gym instead find themselves drawn to safer, better-regulated sporting pursuits. The rise and rise of MMA has also taken a huge chunk out of boxing’s popularity and relevance, and the sport currently finds itself far removed from its former lofty status.
That being said, when the world’s best fighters come together, few sports can stand toe to toe with boxing as far as excitement, drama and generated income are concerned.
Case in point: Floyd ‘Money’ Mayweather vs. Manny ‘Pac-Man’ Pacquiao.
If you’re interested in purchasing a ticket for the bout… good luck. Aside from the fact that a paltry thousand tickets from the 16,800 capacity MGM Grand Garden Arena went on general sale, you’ll need to have £100,000 lying around to stand any chance of bagging a seat.
Make no mistake – this is big-time sport looming at its very largest, and for once the hype is entirely justified. The world will be watching on May 2, and here are ten reasons why you should be too.
10. Better Late Than Never
There are many reasons behind boxing’s gradual decline, but one pertinent factor is that, unlike in virtually any other sport, the best fighters are not duty-bound to square off against one another.
The proliferation of alphabet organisations with varying degrees of credibility makes it almost impossible for your average sports fan to deduce who the main men really are. There’s simply no obligation for a champion in one weight class to face a direct rival unless the dollars make sense.
So it is that a fight between Floyd Mayweather and Manny Pacquiao has been earmarked for six years now, with final confirmation that the May 2 bout would go ahead only arriving ten weeks ago.
Why did it take so long for the two best boxers in the sport to finally agree to fight one another? The main sticking point in the protracted, tedious negotiations was Mayweather’s insistence that Pacquiao submit to unprecedented random drug testing, and ‘Money’ Mayweather also aggressively pursued a larger slice of the financial pie and several other concessions.
The American’s legal troubles that saw him spend two months in prison sentence for domestic battery in 2012 and Pacquiao’s devastating knockout defeat at the hands of Juan Manuel Marquez in the same year were also stumbling blocks. Still, as the saying goes, better late than never.