Mayweather v Pacman

Every decade, a fight or series of fights defines the decade, undoubtedly the 1920s and 1930s were the golden age of boxing as Jack Dempsey, Gene Tunney and the brown bomber Joe Louis fought consistently at venues like Madison Square Gardens and Philadelphia.

In recent history, I look to the 1970s with Muhammed  Ali v Smoking Joe Frazier for their three fight series culminating in the 1975 Thrilla in Manila, Ali again v the monstrous George Foreman in the 1973 Rumble in the Jungle or even the less promoted but no less exciting Ali v Ken Norton three fight series.

The 1980s gave us the middleweight duels with Sugar Ray Leonard, Marvelous Marvin Haggler, Tommy Hearns and Roberto Duran. The 1990s gave us the long awaited Evander Holyfield and Mike Tyson heavyweight match-ups and Jeff Fenech and Azumah Nelson super featherweight fights. Then the 2000s finally saw Danny Green v motormouth Anthony Mundine for the Australian grudge match in 2006. East LA golden boy Oscar De La Hoya fought a much younger Floyd Mayweather towards the end of his career in 2007 where he was beaten by split decision.

After years of negotiations and false starts, the best pound-for-pound boxers of their era finally came together; fortunately for me I was in the Philippines to join in the pre-bout fever, unfortunately for me I was out in Palawan fight day and was unable to find out the result until much later afterwards.

The boxer v puncher match-up unanimously informs us while the majority of these bouts goes the distance, the boxer and not the puncher is victorious. So while a Mayweather and Pacquiao bout is likely to be the long awaited superfight it was promoted as; if Manny didn't sit Floyd on his arse in the early rounds, the result was always inevitable. Floyd the technician with the tight defensive skills and counter-punching ability was always going to win on points otherwise.

No way was Floyd going to go toe-to-toe with Manny, why would he be sucked into fighting to Manny's strengths? His tried and proven tactic of jab, move and counter-punch from a tight defensive framework is his highly successful modus operandi. Mayweather is known to jab heavily early on in the fight to score points and win the early rounds then doing enough in the middle and later rounds to ensure no upset is recorded. That is exactly what we saw in Las Vegas - the better boxer retained his WBA and WBC belts with a sound and proven strategy whilst walking away with Pacquiao's WBO title.

With the huge build-up, it was a fight that could never live up to the hype...