The Importance of Floyd
With the Marquez Bout, a Comeback for Him - and Boxing
2009-09-17
By Eric Easter
Over the years I’ve tried to force myself to as passionate about football, baseball and the other things that people get fanatical about, but no matter how hard I try I still come back to boxing. I’m a believer in the notion that people are influenced over a lifetime by the first things they experience. And for me, among those first things were dog-eared copies of RING magazine next to my father’s can of National Bohemian beer. The beer is terrible but the boxing stuck.
People will disagree but I am among those people who consider boxing to be the only pure sport remaining. Great sports should be more than competition, they should tell a story – about heart, about survival, about dedication, about preparedness. Beauty in its simplicity. Complexity in its art. No checked swings, Australian rules, foot faults or foul shots. You hit me, I hit you, until we’re done. That’s a sport.
But purity is not really enough to sustain a sport that’s been suffering since the downfall of Mike Tyson. Should you ever get a chance to watch the documentary, TYSON, what we’ve been missing in boxing since the champ’s best days becomes painfully clear. With few exceptions, we’ve lost the drama that’s been essential to boxing since Jack Johnson, and the heavyweight division is all but lost forever.
In the least two years, Mixed Martial Arts has eclipsed boxing as an earner on Pay-Per View. That’s partly because MMA is to boxing what the three-point shot is to the NBA. It ups the ante just a bit, speeds up the game, and replaces the need for a story with an adrenaline fix. But the drama is manufactured, even if the action is admittedly exciting. The sport – as a marketing engine – has borrowed too much from its cousin, professional wrestling. Still, its popularity is soaring.
MMA has had one major competitor, however – Mayweather.
If you love boxing, you can watch any fight. And the best ones –for pure action - tend to be among the no-names at the childlike weight classes. But for his class, Mayweather comes the closest to the passion, energy and speed you see at the amateur level. And unlike, say, Roy Jones Jr., Mayweather hasn’t become so overly confident and cynical about his skills that he forgets to give you a real fight. Fifty bucks is a lot of money, especially these days, to show up on your cable bill to get something you can’t be certain about. Floyd has yet to disappoint.
Mayweather is also, surprisingly, a role model. Despite the cars, the flash, the Money Mayweather self-hype, and what most people would expect to be a tragic crash ahead, Floyd has been a demon in business. When I interviewed him during training camp prior to the Hatton fight, whatever question I asked about boxing and technique came back to business. There was no PR guy in between us to keep his answers on track, it was a result of a laser focus on entrepreneurship and a desire not to end up like so many others in the sport. The flash is a distraction, but it is show business after all.
I love Marquez as a fighter, and I don’t have a dog in this fight where skills are concerned. I’m predicting a good battle. But we’ve got a while before the almost permanent stain left on boxing by Don King and others will be entirely washed away. So as a fan of boxing I’ll be rooting for a blazing, impressive, rapid (but not so quick that I don’t get my money’s worth) victory by Floyd Mayweather. The sport needs it.
Plus, the audiences at MMA bouts just aren’t as pretty as at boxing matches.
Eric Easter is the VP of Digital and Entertainment for Johnson Publishing.
Mayweather –Marquez is this Saturday September 19 at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas if you’re there, or can be viewed on HBO Pay Per View.
