My Thoughts on the Mayweather/Pacquaio Fight.

If you follow boxing closely or listened to the Main Event Sports Show the day of the fight then you were not surprised by the outcome or the pace of the fight. Now, if you were a casual boxing fan, like I imagine the vast majority of people were, then you would be very disappointed with the fight. For the average fan this was not an exciting fight at all. It was slow. Manny could barley hit Mayweather. Mayweather rarely pressed or initiated any action.  Basically, it was a typical Mayweather fight.

Manny knew what he had to do to win. Mayweather was the bigger fighter and had a substantial reach advantage. Manny's only chance to win was to smother Mayweather with punches and force his way inside to neutralize Mayweather reach advantage. For this strategy to work Manny was going to have to eat a lot of punches. Which he should have been able to do because Mayweather isn't a power puncher. He doesn't have one punch knock out power. Instead Manny held back looking for an opening that would never be there.

However, I think the fight was lost well before then. All week long leading up to the fight we heard reports on how relaxed Manny was. He was smiling, joking and pretty jovial all week long. I'm not saying he had to look serious and and talk trash about Mayweather all week, but I would like to have seen the eye of the tiger at least once. I knew the fight was over when Manny and his trainer Freddie Roach took a selfie on the way to ring. I lost even more confidence in Manny when I saw that his entourage to the ring included Jimmy Kimmel dressed like the 4th member of Run DMN and the Burger King King. It was over before it even got started.

I would be remiss if I didn't mention the good Rev. Jaime Foxx and the National Anthem.  I was expecting a jazzed up soulful rendition of the National Anthem. I was expecting to hear a gospelized version. Who gave the OK for that? I'm sure they had to of practiced at least once during the week. Somebody should have stepped in and said, "You know Jamie, I loved you in Ray Charles. Can we get a Ray Charles rendition instead? James Brown maybe? How about an impersonation of Prince? You do a good Michael Jackson."

I'm not even going to comment about Manny's post fight interview when he said that he thought he had won.

This fight was like one of those old movies about a group of thieves who are looking for that one last big score before they retire. This was Manny's and Floyd's last big score. They will fight again, but this was the big one that set them up for life. Floyd is 38 and will soon retire, and Manny is 36 and has a ton of others things to do, like finish out his term in congress. Floyd can now say his career is complete and his legacy is intact. Manny, go his biggest payday ever. Just like in Ocean's 11 they can all meet in front of MGM grand. Smile at each other. Take a long look at the strip, and then shake hands and walk away.

                                                                            - Haven Harrington III -