Last May's Floyd Mayweather Jr.-Oscar de la Hoya WBC light middleweight championship bout led with a splendid verbal jab--"The Fight to Save Boxing." Never mind that no fight can, with that implication, "save" boxing or that boxing is muddling along and may not require saving. Sports fans bought into the notion big-time and, as a result, the fight last May on HBO-PPV set financial records.
The problem with that kind of hype is that the fight then carries huge expectations. And though the judges deemed it close--a split decision for Mayweather--the bout didn't come close to meeting the fans' dreams of a fight classic. Boxing afficionados may have witnessed an interesting tactical and technical fight in which two talented skillful stylists boxed, though they seldom engaged. Casual fans saw a bit of a bore in which neither fighter looked like he could knock out the other or, indeed, that they were really trying to. To insiders, that was hardly a surprise; retired Chicago Tribune boxing writer Michael Hirsley, who covered the fight, recalls that 90 percent of the boxing writers, in the traditional, pre-fight poll/pool, picked Mayweather to win--but not a single one picked him to win by other than a decision.
So now along comes Mayweather's next fight--Saturday night against Brit Ricky Hatton for the WBC welterweight crown--and it has the potential to be a far more interesting, challenging and spirited affair. But not surprisingly, the public is loathe to get sucked in for another disappointing buy. And that reluctance leaves little doubt that, while Mayweather, at 30, is still in his prime, remains undefeated as well as Ring Magazine's number one-rated pound-for-pound fighter, is a "Pretty Boy" (that's his nickname, as he constantly reminds us) and has enough celebrity now to cha-cha-cha on "Dancing With the Stars", he still has not engaged the average American sports fan. It was clearly the "Golden Boy" de la Hoya who drove the TV gate last time.
At the time of his fight with Mayweather, de la Hoya, at 34, could only be regarded as a former great with diminished skiills. He rarely fought any more and when, in the latter years of his career, he had taken on elite fighters--Bernard Hopkins, Shane Mosely, Felix Trinidad--he had lost. Hatton, by contrast, is just 29 years old and boasts a 43-0 record with 31 knockouts. Immensely popular back home in England, Hatton doesn't appear to be one of those English palookas who comes to America with an inflated reputation built against soft opponents and buoyed by home cooking. He was Fighter of the Year in 2005 and has already crossed over to win his last three bouts in the States.
Most important, he is an indefatiguable stalker, providing the hope that he just may wade in against Mayweather and pursue him around the ring. If there are legs in the hoary, boxing cliche that styles make fights, Hatton's style is somewhat reminiscent of that of Jose Luis Castillo. Castillo fought Mayweather twice back in 2002 and, particularly the second time around, gave him about as much trouble as anyone ever has in the ring. Coincidentaly, Hatton's last fight, in June, was against Castillo and he knocked him out in the fourth round.
Of course, there have been other fighters who were determined enough to try and mix it up with Mayweather and ended up, as Floyd tattooed them, looking very slow by comparison. And despite Hatton's apparent iron will, Mayweather might still be hard to catch if he decides to box and run (and to hell with the fans). But then again, it's just a fight with a chance to be a good one. Nobody's pretending it's going to save anything.; And if it saves me from boredom on a wintry Saturday night, that could be just enough to make it a big winner.
