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The long-awaited day finally came for all of us boxing fans. After five years, Floyd Mayweather and Manny Pacquiao will finally step through the ropes to settle who is the premier welterweight of this generation.
This fight has been on the radar for boxing fans since Mayweather came back from a brief retirement, outboxing and battering an over-matched and outweighed Juan Manuel Marquez. Pacquiao destroyed and retired Oscar De la Hoya in 2008 to make him a crossover star, following it up with a brutal second round knockout against Ricky Hatton.
Both men continued to clean out the welterweight and surrounding divisions. All the while excuses to why the fight wouldn’t happen started to surface.
Then after a frustrating two years of non news, Mayweather left HBO to Showtime and Pacquiao was first robbed against Timothy Bradley in their first meeting before being sensationally knocked out by Juan Manuel Marquez in 2012. This made the fight somewhat lose it’s appeal.
Mayweather continued on his winning ways while Pacquiao rebuilt and avenged the loss to Bradley, but with both men running out of suitable opponents it gave the opportunity for other fighters to build themselves into crossover stars.
Saul ‘Canelo’ Alvarez, despite a wide points loss to Mayweather in 2013, has a huge fan-base in Mexico. A fight between him and Julio Cesar Chavez Jnr was long rated as the second biggest fight in the sport, with the potential of drawing a monster crowd should they fight in Mexico – not to mention the millions of viewers who tune in to watch them each time they fight.
Miguel Cotto now flies the Puerto Rican boxing flag that Felix Trinidad once flew. His unlikely capture of the lineal middleweight title in June 2014 puts him in line for at least a huge payday, not to mention reaffirms him as one of boxing’s superstars despite losses to both Mayweather (2012) and Pacquiao (2009).
Alvarez has been after a fight with Cotto since 2012, when Cotto was attempting to bounce back from a loss to Mayweather and capture a title from underrated Austin Trout.
Cotto has been one of the bigger names in boxing since he dethroned Shane Mosley and battled through two controversial fights with Antonio Margarito, not to mention his bouts with Mayweather and Pacquiao.
Cotto was seen as a good test for the young Mexican, a good name to get on his record and a historic rivalry for the fans (Mexico versus Puerto Rico). Cotto lost a wide decision to Trout, setting up a Canelo versus Trout 2013 bout and looking to be the end of the Cotto era as the Puerto Rican flag bearer.
Cotto restored his name with the Martinez win and Alvarez bounced back well in 2014 with victories over Alfredo Angulo and Erisandy Lara. Mayweather officially ran out of opponents after he defeated Alvarez and if not for Marcos Maidana’s upset of Adrien Broner, would have had trouble getting a decent opponent in 2014.
The irony of this whole situation has been lost on a lot of boxing fans. There is no one in the welterweight or junior middleweight division for Floyd Mayweather or Manny Pacquiao to fight outside of themselves.
This has been an issue that boxing fans have been bringing up for a long time, but it is now at the point where the fighters they have already beaten are able to make bigger fights among themselves without needing either ‘Money’ or ‘Pacman’ in the opposite corner.
Cotto and Alvarez were in failed negotiations for a fight on May second. The two biggest dates on the boxing calendar are the first weekend in May and the second weekend in September.
A quick look at Floyd Mayweather’s record shows every fight he has had since his 2009 return has fallen in either early May or mid September. Saul Alvarez and Julio Cesar Chavez fought in separate bouts on the September date during Mayweather brief incarceration in 2012 but surrendered the dates back to Floyd when he was released.
The fact that there was no one not named Manny Pacquiao that Floyd Mayweather could have fought in May second to push Alvarez and Cotto, two men he has already beaten, is a little beautiful.
Without shifting the weight on either Mayweather or Pacquiao for the fight not coming off – and the fact that when the two of them sat down and negotiated among themselves that the fight was made showed that neither was afraid of the other – it’s nice to see the whole situation resolved.
Even if the slow build-up was due to failed negotiations, it will be great to see one of the next biggest fights in the sport.
The best thing to take out of this whole situation is that boxing is healthy again and that despite the Bob Arum/Golden Boy, HBO/Showtime wars, the best fights in boxing are being made.
As a fight enthusiast, this is all that can be asked for.
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