Here we are folks. A mere five day week and we will be smack down in the middle of quite possibly the most anticipated fight of all time. Yes, there have been other bouts that have been called the “Fight of the Century” but none of them enjoyed the world-wide up to the minute media blitz like this one. During Joe Louis vs Max Schmeling or Ali vs Frazier I or II, the world didn’t have Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and all the other ways that people nowadays communicate. Quite possibly thousands of billboards have gone up while thousands of businesses are promoting the fact that they will be broadcasting the fight, legally or illegally. The current pound for pound king Floyd Mayweather Jr will finally face the fighter of last decade Manny Pacquiao this Saturday night from the MGM Grand Arena and live on Showtime/HBO Pay-Per-View.
After five years of talking about it and not talking about it and now about three months of negotiating, even up to last week when an agreement was finally reached with the MGM and the promoters and tickets finally made it out to the world. So now that is left in the next couple of days to have the grand arrivals at the MGM, or not, as Pacquiao has opted not to and instead will have a fan rally at the Mandalay Bay. The final press conference should be on Thursday afternoon and the weigh-in, with tickets which originally cost $10 being scalped at nearly $300 by brokers.
Oh yeah, and they actually have to get in the ring and fight.
That is where the rubber will hit the road. It is expected for the event to break all records, from the gate with tickets being scalped for an unprecedented $200K to the Pay-Per-View with experts speculating that it can truly hit the three million mark in sales.
Does it all matter if the fight is not good?
It might hurt the rematch if there ever is one since a clause to guarantee a return match was not included if Mayweather Jr wins but only if Pacquiao does. By the time the first bell rings and the third man in the ring, Kenny Bayless, orders them to box, it won’t matter, the money would have been spent, the rooms rented, airplane tickets used and merchandise bought. The checks of upwards to $200 million for Mayweather and $100 for Pacquiao might not have been written yet but that will come days later.
The only one that can make this an entertaining fight is Manny Pacquiao. Many believe that Mayweather Jr has never risked in a fight and in the last decade has only done enough to win the fight. The catalyst here must be Pacquiao who is believed would push Mayweather Jr the most he has ever been pushed. Since hitting the world-level boxing radar, we have never seen Pacquiao give up and go through the motions in a fight even if he was losing. We have seen that in the most recent opponents of Mayweather Jr where Guerrero, Alvarez and Maidana have gone through the motions in the second half of the fight once they realized they could not hit Mayweather Jr.
Pacquiao seems to be up for the challenge.
