Let’s get ready to rumble.
Tomorrow night, Floyd “Money” Mayweather Jr. will put his 47-0 record on the line against Manny Pacquiao. It’s a fight the boxing world has been waiting years for. Like a student trying to get out of homework, Mayweather has come up with every excuse in the book to push this fight back.
Regardless of being beyond each boxer’s prime, this match is still being labeled “The Fight of the Century,” which speaks volumes about how bad boxing has been this century.
To give you a quick breakdown, Pacquiao is a 36-year-old southpaw with a shorter reach than the 38-year-old orthodox fighter Mayweather. That’s all I’ve got.
I’ll admit I know little about boxing. I understand how the matches work, who the fighters are and how someone wins. I know of Muhammad Ali, Joe Frazier, George Foreman, Oscar de la Hoya and Mike Tyson.
But I don’t know how they line up in history, who fought who or who was the greatest because I never watch the sport.
In today’s society, people love the UFC and its caged violence. Boxing is a thought of the past, so odds are you probably know little as well.
But once upon a time, boxing ran the sports world. People packed arenas to watch two of the biggest, baddest men in the world get into a legal fist fight. Think of it as Tigerland without the two freshmen being kicked out afterward. Sounds fun, right?
For a sport to be as popular as boxing was, there has to be something special to it, something needed to make it amazing. Maybe it was just the violence, and maybe UFC has replaced it with a better, more aggressive version.
But for one night, I’m willing to give it a chance. I want to see what took boxing to the level it once was.
This fight probably won’t be of the same magnitude as the greatest ever because both Pacquiao and Mayweather are reaching the end of their careers. But this is as close as we’ll ever get.
Many of you won’t because it’s the Saturday night before finals week. You’re either going to be studying or getting wasted to keep yourself from studying. If you’re choosing the latter, why not go to a sports bar somewhere with friends to watch the fight, or maybe host a house party and have everyone chip in to pay for it on HBO or Showtime? You could even come up with drinking games.
Regardless of how you decide to watch, don’t you think watching what could be the last great boxing match is worth it? I know I sure do.
Brian Pellerin is a 21-year-old mass communication junior from Kenner, Louisiana. You can reach him on Twitter @Pellerin_TDR.