The fight was canceled once because of performance enhancing drugs. Though it will finally occur, does the past-their-prime Mayweather v Pacquiao fight represent another loss to PEDs?
___
I first started following boxing in college when I heard about this undefeated dude named Mayweather. Then I heard about this other dude named Pacquiao, who, at the time, was 45-3-2 going into his fight with Marquez. Pacquiao won the Marquez fight by split decision.
It was the first pay-per-view fight I’d ever watched live. I was an immediate Pacquiao fan.
At the time, there was a divide among boxing enthusiasts about who the best fighter in the world was: Pacquiao or Mayweather. One was more of a spider-monkey who just whipped up on his opponents. The other was seen as more of a chess player in the ring.
After the Marquez/Pacquiao fight I asked my buddy, “Have Mayweather and Pacquiao faught?”
My buddy laughed. “No, they haven’t.”
I was sad.
In December of that same year Pacquiao fought “The Golden Boy” Oscar De La Hoya, and – before the fight was stopped by the referee – beat him like a drum.
♦◊♦
I wanted the Pacquiao/Mayweather fight bad.
Soon after the De La Hoya fight, it was announced the Pacquiao/Mayweather fight was in the works, and it was scheduled.
And then, just like The Chappelle Show, it was over. The apparent cause: PEDs. Though there was no proof that either of them was taking PEDs, one party allegedly refused to submit to Olympic drug testing, and the fight was canceled.
I have my own opinions of why the fight didn’t happen, and most of them circle around Mayweather being scared of fighting Pacquiao for fear of no longer being undefeated.
After the dust cleared and Mayweather spent time locked up, most people assumed it would never happen. We assumed that potentially the greatest fight in boxing history (except maybe Ali/Frazier 1-3) was lost for another generation.
I felt let down by the boxing world.
Now, finally, we have a chance at seeing the fight, supposedly the fight of a generation. And it got me thinking: This fight is going to be great, it will be only the second pay-per-view event I’ve ever paid for. And no matter how it ends, it will settle a long debate about who is the best boxer of a generation — but with caveats. Are both of them past their prime? And if so, how can we be so sure this fight will settle the debate?
♦◊♦
We may never know the exact reason as to why the first fight was nixed, but no matter how you swing it, it was a PED controversy. And over the last couple of decades this has been a recurring theme across the sporting world.
Since Jose Conseco wrote his book, performance enhancing drugs have ruined, or tainted, some of the greatest memories and figures in sports:
As a ten year old I was astonished by the fact that Mark McGwire had a section of Busch Stadium named after him because of the towering homeruns he bashed into the third deck.
I loved watching the Cubs because Sammy Sosa had the most identifiable trot in the game. And like a boxing match, polarized baseball nation, and ultimately saved baseball in the mainstream. With the season ending holding McGwire victorious with 70 homeruns and Sosa with a mere 66 (which also was enough to break the previous record) they had done something many thought unthinkable in an age where pitchers such as Randy Johnson and Pedro Martinez were hurling 92 mph breaking balls over the plate.
The problem ultimately is that we’ve lost some great sports heroes.
Lance Armstrong has no historical credit for his amazing feat of being a seven-time Tour de France champion. Barry Bonds will never be in the Hall of Fame along with Sosa (if he was deserving) or McGwire. Ben Johnson in the 1988 Olympics in Seoul ran one of the best 100m dashes in Olympic history but tested positive for steroids and that was it. Alex Rodriguez’s career has turned into a joke, and at one point he was a lock to be a Hall of Fame worthy shortstop.
It makes me feel as if fans have been robbed of something in sports from the last two decades.
♦◊♦
Yes, this boxing match will occur on May 2nd of this year. And though neither of these fighters are ancient, six years is a long time in a boxing career. And Pacquiao has taken a couple of tough losses since then.
This will still be the fight of a generation, but it won’t be the fight it would have been in 2009. And as a person who wanted to see Mayweather unseated, I’m less confident now than I was then.
This fight will settle the dispute about who is the best fighter in the world. And I can’t be convinced it’s Mayweather until he fights the other greatest fighter of a generation. I just desperately wish we could have a sports world that wasn’t tainted by steroids. It would have been a purer form of this fight six years ago.
___
Photo: Flickr/rommel
[…]always a big fan of linking to boxing that I love but don’t get a lot of link love from[…]……