LAS VEGAS -- Despite being dubbed “the fight of the century” and holding claim as one of the most anticipated sporting events in years, Saturday’s Floyd Mayweather-Manny Pacquiao superfight has generated very few buzz-worthy nuggets throughout the fight’s buildup.
In fact, outside of the ongoing soap opera between the bitter rivals who have hastily put together the promotional and pay-per-view aspects of this dysfunctional mixed marriage, there hasn’t been much to talk about.
Well, that’s not completely true. Top Rank’s Bob Arum, Pacquiao’s longtime promoter, can’t stop talking. Neither can trainer Freddie Roach. Meanwhile, on the other side, Team Mayweather has had varying degrees of success trying to prevent trainer Floyd Mayweather Sr. from talking at all.
But those comments tend to be battered and fried in a grease pit of hyperbole. It’s the fighters we long to hear from and -- more importantly -- to hear them produce something of substance.
This promotion, however, has been void of anything close. Throughout all of the fight-week events from the grand arrivals to the final news conference and the private media scrums, there has been no trash talk. No anger-fueled guarantees. Barely even an insult.
Pacquiao has remained his jovial self, focusing more on sharing his message of hope and faith -- and how he hopes to share that with Mayweather after the fight -- than describing how he might defeat the reigning pound-for-pound king.
But it’s Mayweather who has been especially tight-lipped. If he’s playing poker and doing his best to disguise his true face, he’s doing a great job. But if he isn’t, the monotone voice and emotionless way in which he has answered questions -- with an annoyed glare in place of his typical confident smile -- could make one wonder what’s actually up.
Mayweather, who paved the way for his record-breaking financial success by cultivating his villainous prefight persona “Money,” summed up his lack of prefight histrionics by telling reporters on Wednesday, “As far as me speaking out and having a big personality -- I did that already in the past. This fight sells itself.”
That last part is true. The last-minute, bungling nature of how the fight was made likely won’t hurt PPV sales, even with tickets not going on sale until nine days before and the glaring void of a proper media tour in the previous months. In many ways, the convoluted five-plus-year soap opera that got us to May 2 was, in fact, the fight’s real promotion.
But Roach has taken the idea of Mayweather being potentially rattled a bit further, telling reporters at multiple media stops this week that he questions whether Mayweather will even show up on fight night.
“I am still worried about that,” said Roach, before the start of Wednesday’s final news conference. “I won’t believe it until I see him in front of us in the ring.”
Arum was quick to cut Roach off, reminding the crowd that they are trying to sell a PPV and that the trainer’s comments were more figurative than literal. But Roach contests that Mayweather was forced into the fight.
“Every fight he has had in his lifetime was one that he picked,” Roach said. “He didn’t want this fight. Every fight he has had in his lifetime was one that he picked. This is the first one he was forced into and I feel he was uncomfortable. They made him take it.”
Mayweather, 38, has talked a lot more about his end game over the past 12 months than what challenges are left for him to conquer. Recently, he has been adamant that Saturday’s fight and one more in September -- to close out his landmark, six-fight deal with Showtime/CBS -- will be his last.
But whether Roach’s comments are simply fodder for Internet clickbait or a somewhat accurate presentation of Mayweather’s recent apathy toward the selling of this fight, Mayweather’s silence has been a bit deafening in recent months.
Is he simply dialed in for what likely amounts to the most difficult challenge of his career and the greatest threat to his unbeaten mark -- the one element he has built his entire legacy and financial success upon? Or is there something deeper in play here that even the defensive wizard Mayweather can’t dodge?
Maybe this is the reaction of a fighter who, for the first time in years, doesn’t feel like he’s in the kind of complete control that he has used to make opponents miss before selectively matching up the next in line. Or maybe Mayweather just has so much respect for what Pacquiao brings to the table that there’s no room for false bravado.
Either way, the 71 days between when the fight was announced and when the two fighters consummate their rivalry on Saturday have been focused almost exclusively on the actual fight itself, instead of the typical fabricated prefight documentary moments of carnival thespianism. And that’s not a bad thing, to be honest. It speaks more about how good this matchup really is.
Mayweather-Pacquiao is an event that will grab the attention of the entire sports world and beyond on Saturday. But it’s for the right reasons. Even five years later, the fight offers what it always has: No. 1 vs. No. 2 in their division, their sport and their era.
Boxing fans couldn’t ask for anything more. Even if things have been a bit anticlimactic for each fighter on the road to getting there.
