Welterweights capture our imagination
The box populi has spoken: FIGHT OF THE CENTURY. Albeit the century is still a pup. But this moment — this Saturday — is being written as history on the run, the belle epoch of boxing unfolding at the gambling cathedral that is the MGM Grand.
A couple of pugilists beyond their prime yet still considered the greatest fighters of their era, vying for a diamond-encrusted championship belt (worth a million smackers but that’s just chump change amidst the event’s mind-boggling cha-ching numbers) and a welterweight unification title.
Floyd Mayweather vs. Manny Pacquiao — king of bling and bombast and braggadocio versus the mild-mannered ballad-crooning Filipino congressman who’s covered Sometimes When We Touch.
A tale of two up-from-the-ghetto gold-minted icons who beat people senseless for a living. But according to the controlled mayhem stipulations of the sweet science, what Sugar Ray Leonard described as “poetry of physical action.”
The tragic poet Lord Byron was a boxer too. Just sayin’.
Biggest fight of all-time, in unapologetic hyperbole, which is true if measured by lucre and pay-per-view eyeballs — where sport intersects with commerce.
And what is all this ballyhoo about, now erupting like the man-made volcano in front of the Mirage? Best man standing at 147 pounds.
An un-round oddball number with, nevertheless, historical mystique inside the squared circle.
In contemporary parlance, the glamorama division of fisticuffs, deepest in talent and mythic personalities.
The apogee of boxing, pound-forpound, eclipsing the huge-yawn heavyweights of a post-Tyson, postHolyfield and definitely post- Ali generation.
“Money” Mayweather, by the way, recently pronounced himself superior to Ali.
“No one can ever brainwash me to make me believe Sugar Ray Robinson and Muhammad Ali was better than me,” he told ESPN’s Stephen A. Smith. “No one could ever brainwash me and tell me that.”
He further ridiculed Ali’s rope-adope tactics against George Foreman in their Rumble in the Jungle. “Are you going to tell me it’s cool to lay on the ropes and take punishment and let a man tire himself out from beating you? He’s basically fatigued — you hit him with a few punches and he goes down and quits. You want to be glorified for that? Absolutely not, not me.”
Besides, Mayweather added in a later conference call with journalists, Ali once lost to an opponent (Leon Spinks) who had only seven previous bouts.
“I’m undefeated.” Record: 47-0. “He called himself The Greatest so I call myself The Best Ever. I knew there would be a backlash but I couldn’t care less.”
Packs quite a nerve — if not neces- sarily a knockout punch; 26 by KO — in those 147 pounds, or 140 to 147, however the scales read when he steps up at the “pay-to-weigh” spectacle come Friday, the first time fans will be charged (a nominal fee, $10, going to charity) for this particular pre-fight ritual.
A magical number, 147, embodying purported “fistic perfection,” under which have been filed among the most memorable of mega-matches: Roberto Duran’s upset of Sugar Ray Leonard (and the “no mas’’ rematch), Leonard’s Part II technical KO of Thomas Hearns in the 14th round, Oscar De La Hoya’s corner throwing in the towel against Pacquiao in the ninth. The panoply of 147 pounders includes luminaries Robinson, Kid Gavilan, Henry Armstrong, Amir Khan, Felix Trinidad and Juan Manuel Marquez.
Boxing historians say the welterweight classification goes back more than a century to England, whence the modern sport sprung. The National Sporting Club of England, seeking to standardize divisions, used the English stone unit as a weight measurement and came up with eight traditional classes. But they wanted something between light and middleweight; hence 10.5 stone — 147 pounds.
The term “welter,” coined in 1832, derives from horse racing and referred to the amount of weight a horse was permitted to carry in a steeplechase or hurdle race.
“It literally meant a ‘heavyweight horseman,’ ” explains Lou Eisen, a Toronto-based boxing historian (and standup comic) whose surrogate father was famous fight trainer Angelo Dundee. “Heavyweight at that time meant stellar, not a man of great weight.”
Welter, in common usage of that time, also mean hurting people or leaving a mark on them.
“The reason welterweights gained popularity initially was because most people walked around at a similar weight and height as welterweight fighters,” says Eisen. “Thus they enjoyed watching people like themselves fighting it out in the ring. The sport needed more weight classes because not every fighter was a heavyweight.
“Welterweights had the perfect mix of power, speed and toughness that appealed to all fight fans.”
And they were characteristically colourful dudes, often in the early days fighting much bigger men.
“The smaller guys would often win these fights because they were smaller and much faster than the lumbering heavyweights of the time.”
And it’s a lucrative division precisely because of keen fan interest, which has translated into the humongous purses of prize welterweight mano-a-mano spectacles in more recent decades.
Power, speed and technique are exemplified in the welterweight division. Go lower and power is lost; go higher and speed is lost.
The most glorified weight class and none more glorious than Mayweather and Pacquiao. Mayweather, undefeated in his pro career, has won belts in five weight divisions; Pacquiao is the only fighter with titles in eight different divisions.
This fight will smash all box office records. Tickets started at $1,500 and sold out in 60 seconds. (Cheapest ticket currently available on StubHub goes for five grand.) Floor seats are going for more than $100,000 each. And upwards of four million people are expected to shell out a hundred bucks to watch on pay-per-view.
The fighters? They’ll split $300 million — 60 per cent to Mayweather, a stipulation of the sign-on — for, at most, 36 minutes of work.
Mayweather, who lives in Vegas, was as of Monday a 2-1 favourite on the sports books but the gap is closing. The public likes Pacquiao, is palpably pulling for Pacquiao in a tug-of-war between the heart and the brain.
If nothing else, Mayweather has already won Round Zero — the money and the yip-yap prologue.
“I had to be loud to get where we are today,” he said on the conference call. “At 17 or 18, I was saying, ‘look at me.’ The big personality was part of that game plan, to get to this point we’re at now, making seven figures in one night. Now I’m here.
“My game plan is to win.”