Mayweather Pacquiao: Boxing at a stand still

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Floyd Mayweather Jr. v Marcos Maidana - Weigh-In

 

 

We are still waiting on the Floyd Mayweather Jr. versus Manny Pacquiao fight and, with that being said, this weekend came and went without an announcement. If anything, an ominous tone of disappointment has set in as Saul “Canelo” Alvarez called off negotiations with Miguel Cotto, which was one of the super fights that fans wanted to see for 2015. Rumors are now surfacing that David Lemieux, a hard hitting middleweight, could potentially end up being the next person to face Canelo, but why did Cotto hold off signing a contract after five different manifestations and such high fan interest?

The human being in me that has been abused by boxing for a decade or so believes Cotto is calling Mayweather’s bluff. From the outside looking in, Cotto knows he could realistically set up a fight between himself and Mayweather for May 2nd, if the Pacquiao talks breakdown (like they always have in the past). Canelo had been applying pressure to Cotto to try and secure the May 2nd date and “take it away” from Mayweather even if he was going to just be on regular HBO as opposed to pay-per-view to make a statement. It appears Cotto wasn’t keen on this idea and had other plans.

The announcement for Floyd Mayweather’s next fight should come within the first two weeks of February and this latest bit of gossip suggests that the Pacquiao fight might have just pushed back a tad bit further. In a boring narrative of oversimplified boxing politics and media leveraging to get a fight that might manifest itself to be of the same kind of caliber as Mayweather vs. Canelo, this is just another moment that makes casual fans more confused than ever and more ambivalent about the sport we love. It is so hard to explain to the casual fan why the two best fighters in the sport, and in the same weight class, don’t fight each other, and that it is almost not worth the effort.

Beyond all of this, no one is truly unbiased. I use to actually care, but somewhere along the line I decided to not give a damn about either guy. As most conversations between the two come down to simple race baiting, freshmen level business class seminar speeches or oversimplified analysts of one of the fighters skill sets being able to dominant the fight, the plain truth is no one knows if Floyd can handle the pressure of Manny Pacquiao, the weakness of all technical fighters are guys “who don’t play by the rules” and allow them space to move. The fight will always be interesting, but as I get closer to death I become akin to more things in life and I just believe this may simply be boxing’s greatest “what if.”