10 Reasons The "Fight Of The Century" Was Anything But
Whisper it, but Mayweather-Pacquiao just wasn't that great
It has come and gone, the much ballyhooed "Fight of the Century" between Floyd "Money" Mayweather and Manny Pacquiao, the pride of the Philippines. And when all was said and done, you just had to wonder: what was all the fuss about?
After twelve three minute rounds Saturday night, which in turn came after weeks and months of promoting, rife with hyperbole, the ending of the "greatest" boxing match this side of the millennium went down not with a bang but with a whimper. In fact, the entire bout was a tedious affair in which numerous problems only whispered about before the match became more and more evident as the fight went on.
In short, as USA Today's For The Win screamed in a recent headline, Mayweather-Pacquiao was a complete waste of time and money. Everyone's time - except the fighters getting paid, and their camps. Everyone's money, unless you were on the receiving end of that monty.
To recap: Mayweather won, by decision. It wasn't exactly a close set of scores (118-110, 116-112 and 116-112), and it wasn't exactly unexpected. What was unexpected was how little action actually took place in the bout. This was the best the boxing world has to offer, when they're up against the growing sport of Mixed Martial Arts, and renewed interest in kickboxing thanks to GLORY, when it comes to the combat sports arena?
There's no sugarcoating it: Mayweather-Pacquiao was a dud, and here are ten reasons why.
10. The Undercard Was A Joke
In this day and age, fans ordering events on Pay Per View (read: those stuck in North America for the most part) are used to a certain amount of bang for their buck. Gone are the days where you could float a card with a headliner and leave a couple of cans nobody cares about on the undercard.
Promotions like the UFC and WWE tend to stack their cards whenever possible, and that's what fans want, because you never know when the headlining fight might turn out to be a dud.
Yet promoters lost sight of that with Mayweather-Pacquia, insisting that the main event was all that mattered. On paper, they were right, but since the fight itself turned out to be a dull affair (more on that later), the lack of a decent undercard became absolutely criminal.
How bad was it? There were only two other fights on the PPV card (a handful of other bouts went unaired):
WBC Super Bantamweight World Champion Leo "El Terremoto" Santa Cruz vs. Jose Cayetano and WBO Featherweight Champion Vasyl Lomachenko vs. Gamalier Rodriguez. While those are title fights, they're not really champions people care about - and Vasyl Lomachenko has only had five fights as a professional.
Apparently, that's what it takes to win a belt in boxing these days.