KIDWCKED
01-07-2010, 10:50 PM
c\p by luke thomas
Where else but in boxing can you get a catastrophe that will define the sport in the short term, putting it in a negative light, and then have everyone mud-sling instead of try and fix what's wrong? Bob Arum and Co. will spend their time calling Mayweather a coward, and Mayweather and Co. will spend their time pointing out that all Pacquiao had to do was agree to their demands.
I don't care about the blame game. I only care about what this does to boxing's image, and to the images of a couple of great fighters that I respect. Mayweather and Pacquiao are boxing's representatives to the general public, and depending on which side folks have picked, both of them have taken hits with this bungling. Neither comes out smelling particularly rosy, and when they fight their substitute opponents in March, there are going to be a lot of people that just say, "Who cares?"
All that goodwill that boxing has built up over the past few years is wasted with this one fight going under. Two men managed to captivate the public to an amazing degree, and then when it got right down to it, they backed off of the biggest fight there is.
So what do we as boxing fans do now? We move on. We look at upcoming fights such as Mosley-Berto, Luevano-Lopez, Gamboa-Mtagwa, Valero-DeMarco, Vazquez-Marquez IV, and the second stage of the Super Six World Boxing Classic. There's more to this sport than just Mayweather and Pacquiao.
But no matter what face I try to put on this personally, in the back of my mind on March 13, I'm going to wonder what it would have felt like to watch the two best in the world go nose-to-nose for the referee's instructions.
Where else but in boxing can you get a catastrophe that will define the sport in the short term, putting it in a negative light, and then have everyone mud-sling instead of try and fix what's wrong? Bob Arum and Co. will spend their time calling Mayweather a coward, and Mayweather and Co. will spend their time pointing out that all Pacquiao had to do was agree to their demands.
I don't care about the blame game. I only care about what this does to boxing's image, and to the images of a couple of great fighters that I respect. Mayweather and Pacquiao are boxing's representatives to the general public, and depending on which side folks have picked, both of them have taken hits with this bungling. Neither comes out smelling particularly rosy, and when they fight their substitute opponents in March, there are going to be a lot of people that just say, "Who cares?"
All that goodwill that boxing has built up over the past few years is wasted with this one fight going under. Two men managed to captivate the public to an amazing degree, and then when it got right down to it, they backed off of the biggest fight there is.
So what do we as boxing fans do now? We move on. We look at upcoming fights such as Mosley-Berto, Luevano-Lopez, Gamboa-Mtagwa, Valero-DeMarco, Vazquez-Marquez IV, and the second stage of the Super Six World Boxing Classic. There's more to this sport than just Mayweather and Pacquiao.
But no matter what face I try to put on this personally, in the back of my mind on March 13, I'm going to wonder what it would have felt like to watch the two best in the world go nose-to-nose for the referee's instructions.