Floyd Mayweather is like Chelsea: Frank Warren looks ahead to Mayweather's fight with Manny Pacquiao
EXCLUSIVE COLUMN: Boxing promoter Frank Warren looks ahead to this weekend's fight, explaining why the American is similar to the soon-to-be Premier League champions
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Your support makes all the difference.Some say Floyd Mayweather Jr is the Chelsea of boxing. He can be sometimes negatively effective, a purist though not always a crowd pleaser - he constantly delivers record pay-per-view numbers in the US and has topped Forbes Magazine’s top-earning sportsmen list for the past four years - but like Jose Mourinho’s men he relentlessly grinds out results.. .and as an Arsenal fan it pains me to say that.
And I believe it will be his hand that is hoisted aloft by referee Kenny Bayless when the gold dust settles over Saturday’s multi-million-dollar date with Manny Pacquiao in Las Vegas.
I doubt anyone in sport has a bigger ego than flash Floyd – at times he even makes Muhammad Ali, Chris Eubank and Naseem Hamed seem modest - but this unabashed self-aggrandisement is perhaps the essence of his greatness and longevity.
A consummate professional in that he is never out of shape, training assiduously every day even when not preparing for a fight. I doubt he strays more than half a stone above his best fighting weight at any time. That six pack is a permanent testament to his dedication and commitment of being the best.
More words have been spilled about this confrontation than any previous episode of unarmed combat in history.
The fight is certainly overdue, but has it been oversold as the biggest-ever in the annals of boxing? Even in a business so often blinded by bullshine, the coupling of Money and Manny is an epic collision. Even non-fight fans seem agog.
But is the massive interest really because they believe it is the biggest? Or simply the richest? After all he doesn’t carry that ‘Money’ moniker for nothing.
It has been labelled variously as The Fight of the Century and the Fight of a Lifetime. Well, it may turn out to be the fight of the 21st century but there have been several bigger over the past 100 years. And it is certainly not the fight of my lifetime.
I can’t imagine they are going as wild about this from Africa to Albania as they did when Ali first fought Joe Frazier in 1971, then again in The Thrilla in Manila and, of course, when he destroyed George Foreman in the Rumble in the Jungle.
Even Bob Arum, the 82-year-old American impresario who is a co-promoter of Saturday’s mega-fight as well as Pacquiao’s father figure, admits the first Ali-Frazier fight was bigger. “Then the world stopped,” he says. ”That fight had one great advantage... Muhammad Ali. I don’t think any fight, even from what we call the golden age of Leonard, Hagler, Duran and Hearns, will ever be regarded big as that one.”
Financially this is massive but that’s mainly because of modern marketing and inflation. With today’s global opportunities and technology for TV revenue had they been slugging it out now rather than 40 years ago Ali and Frazier would have pocketed even bigger bucks than the minimum $300 million gross these two ageing welterweights are sharing with a 60-40 split.
I really don’t feel there is the same anticipation among the public about this being such a titanic fight as there was for, say, Ali-Frazier, Hagler-Hearns or Leonard-Duran, who were at their best. This is more a jewel-encrusted occasion. Most of the talk is about the cash rather than the clouting.
That said this is an intriguing scrap though one that could turn out to be more a game of chess than a blistering war.
Mayweather is a genius at the art of economical self-preservation, no rope-a-dope for him, conserving his energy to always finishing fresh. I’d like to see a bit more devil in his work but that’s the way he is, a purist’s boxer.
Pacquiao has the southpaw skills and the aggression to get inside and literally make fist of it but he’s got vulnerability too. He’ll be walking into boxing’s master counter-puncher.
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Mayweather doesn’t like to be pressed but to beat him - and no-one has in 47 bouts – you really need to hurt him. While the smaller Filipino may have the pride and passion I doubt he can turn back the clock and find the power to do that. His last five fights have gone the distance.
Most outside the 100 million in the Philippines – including many in the US - want Manny to win because he’s the nice guy. But you know what they say about them...
I see Mayweather winning imperiously by a unanimous decision or even a stoppage and subsequently heading on to equal, or even beat, Rocky Marciano’s 60-year-old record of 49 successive world victories. The ego is about to land. Again.
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