The Dissappointment of the Century

I don’t even need to say which fight I’m talking about. You know. The Golden Boy VS The Pretty Boy. Heck, even subplot was intriguing with the estranged father of Mayweather stepping away from De La Hoya’s corner to support his son.

Geez, if there ever was a sign that boxing’s sign of apocalypse, look no further than that first paragraph… a Pretty Boy VS a Golden Boy, both of which come under the long-time tutelage of barely literate brothers (Roger and Floyd Sr.)

The promoters advertised it as “the World Awaits” and Golden Boy Promotions sold its soul to basically any and every advertiser who would take the bait. (By the way, this article is brought to you by Tequila Cazadores™ What I can't make a dollar too?)

Some called it the Super Bowl of Boxing. Sports Illustrated tabbed the fight, “The Fight to Save Boxing.” Bill Simmons even took a break from massaging Tim Duncan/Tom Brady/Larry Bird’s collective genitalia to dub this “Boxing’s Last Great Fight.”

I just let a week go by to let ‘the fight of the century’ sink in. Wow. If that’s the century we’re in store for, I think I’ll look elsewhere. Maybe it’s the UFC, maybe its hockey. Heck, I’ll be better off waiting for Kyle Farnsworth inevitable inside fastball on Jason Varitek causing the biggest Yankee-Red Sox donnybrook this side of Don Zimmer. (Oh I could dream, can’t I?)

That’s right I said it, the fight sucked. A week later, and everybody in the boxing world has been hush-hush about the effect of the fight. It was almost as if it was taboo to say the fight was a disappointment – but it was!

For the most part, the experts knew Mayweather was going to dominate, but for sure they expected some kind of showing. The fair-weather boxing fans knew Oscar De La Hoya’s name and cheered their hearts out with every non-effective flurry he threw at Mayweather’s gloves and booed with every singular, non-spectacular responsive counter punch Floyd threw back. It’s Fannnnn-tastic!

Apparently Mayweather’s Ali-like talk was about as close to the excitement we were going to get from the guy. The guy who brought out a chicken and mocked De La Hoya calling him the Golden Girl. The guy who insulted the UFC, an company who’s promotion and organization runs circles around today’s boxing world. The guy who frankly made De La Hoya look like a pretty boy who really didn’t belong in the ring with the real “Pretty Boy.”

But doesn’t the whole bad guy thing only work when you DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT? Like, for example, when you end the fight spectacularly one way or another.

But after all the hoopla, was that what we got?

What we got was no knockdowns, no visible bruising, and no cuts, combined with massive confusion on behalf of the casual fan. Those fans (and one judge who apparently won his job from a slot machine) saw the fight convincingly for De La Hoya. The boxing fanatics and the two other judges saw something of a non-exciting defensive domination from Mayweather that would make the pre-strike New Jersey Devils seem exciting.

In a way I guess Oscar prevailed. He did end up making about two and a half times the amount Mayweather did. And he did bring the non-boxing sports world to the big-screened living rooms of America. And he did try…REALLY REALLY HARD.

But I’m sorry; it wasn’t good enough for me. Maybe I was too optimistic. I was sure that De La Hoya would be kissing canvas in the end. But then again maybe he wouldn’t. Maybe this was going to be the knockdown, drag-out brawl in the mold of the great Gatti-Ward bouts. I guess I fell into the boxing trap mode; the “Hey maybe this will be the fight (fill in blank)” mode.

But Mayweather just wasn’t that guy. He wasn’t out to knock out the Golden Boy. He wasn’t out to make him look silly. He wasn’t even out to show the world that he was decidedly better. He did enough, and just enough to win a title. But that’s not what boxing needed. Not with the eyes of the world on it after a decade-long separation. Not with the sport on a respirator, struggling to compete with the UFC for the average man’s Pay Per View dollar.

But screw boxing, a wins a win. The problem is that when Mayweather comes back for his next fight, and he will come back, will the living rooms be packed like they were for this fight?

Not unless he’s fighting Sean “The Muscle Shark” Sherk in the octagon they won’t.

Jason Paderon is a co-founder, columnist, and cartoonist for ChewThemOut.com. Additionally, he was a news reporter for the Staten Island Advance. He can be reached at paderon@chewthemout.com.