Floyd Mayweather’s latest flirtation with boxing draws global attention, writes George Gigney
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LIKE IT or not, Floyd Mayweather’s appeal endures. Several fight cards aired over the weekend, but it was Mayweather’s three-round exhibition in Japan that generated the most headlines worldwide. Video clips of the fight, including the ending, gained millions of views online in a matter of hours.
It helped that Manny Pacquiao was ringside for the fight. Even in the days before, sound bites and quotes from Mayweather’s interviews were widely reported. He will have another exhibition fight before he is out of the year against a British YouTuber. Floyd also stated that negotiations for another meeting with UFC megastar Conor McGregor are in advanced stages.
If you follow any kind of boxing news, you will have seen stories about Mayweather multiple times over the last week or so. And all of this was for a three-round walk for which he seemed to have trained very little. Oh, and he netted her $20 million.
Now, the actual boxing cards that were unveiled this weekend weren’t exactly blockbusters, but they still indicate just how much attention Mayweather received over the past week. At one point he said that he’s still the biggest name in the sport despite being technically retired, and he’s probably right.
Boxing today has its superstars, but none who have transcended the public consciousness quite like Mayweather and, indeed, Pacquiao. It might be some time before we see their likes again.
The BBC announced that the terrestrial broadcaster will continue to broadcast professional boxing live for the first time in 17 years after its coverage of a Welsh card earlier in the year; In addition, it will feature female professional wrestlers, which will be a complete first for the BBC.
Unified Promotions is organizing a four-fight women’s card in Sheffield next month and the show will be broadcast live on BBC iPlayer. It’s a shame the card isn’t featured on one of the BBC’s main channels, but it seems like an important step in the right direction. It is reported that if this goes well, boxing could appear more regularly on BBC3.
The BBC has for quite some time left boxing on the sidelines when it comes to coverage. That’s not just in terms of streaming, but even news about the sport. So this latest development could be extremely exciting. It could get a lot more people to watch boxing, particularly those who maybe weren’t interested in it beforehand.
It is also another opportunity for the fighters. This card will take place a week before the big women’s card on Sky Sports featuring Claressa Shields vs. Savannah Marshall and Mikaela Mayer vs. Alycia Baumgardner. It is cards like these that will reach girls and young women and encourage them to play the sport; that’s how it grows.
The BBC is unlikely to start investing heavily in boxing from now on, particularly considering the staggering sums other broadcasters pay for the sport, but this is certainly a positive development.
In one of the strangest stories to surface last week, Eddie Hearn and Matchroom Boxing are suing Jake Paul for $100 million. Yes, 100 million real US dollars. TMZ was the first to report the news.
The dispute stems from comments Paul recently made in an interview with IFL TV. The YouTuber claimed that judge Glen Feldman, who scored the recent Oleksandr Usyk-Anthony Joshua rematch in favor of the latter and had Katie Taylor a big winner against Amanda Serrano earlier in the year, had been paid by Matchroom for those two cards. .
It’s stupid to say, isn’t it? There is no evidence that any corruption exists in boxing, and certainly not at the highest level. Are there problems with judges within the sport? Absolutely, but it’s not because the judges are in the game.
Paul wants to be taken seriously as a boxer and, apparently, as a promoter; he still hasn’t given us a reason to do so, and these comments are just further proof that he doesn’t understand the sport. Hearn and Matchroom won’t get $100 million from him, but legal action is the right move: You can’t launch serious accusations against a rival organization without any evidence like that and expect no consequences.
Speaking of fallout, it was interesting to see the reaction to Shakur Stevenson’s weight loss for his fight over the weekend. He relinquished his ‘world’ title on the scales, as well as a part of his purse. In the past, we’ve seen fighters, particularly champions, criticized for losing weight, but Stevenson received no such reaction.
In fact, many reactions focused on excitement at the prospect of the young talent now moving up to lightweight where Devin Haney and Gervonta Davis operate. Losing his title and sacrificing money is an appropriate punishment for losing weight and it was heartening to hear him immediately admit that he is past super featherweight and will move up to 135 pounds immediately.
Ideally, fighters should automatically choose to fight at their natural weight rather than cut down and rehydrate for fight night. Maybe we’re starting to see a shift in public perception where instead of yelling at wrestlers for losing weight, fans are just glad to see them face the realities of their bodies.
However, this is not to celebrate Stevenson. He still missed the weight and if he previously knew he can’t make 130 pounds safely, he shouldn’t have taken this fight and instead moved up in weight beforehand.
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Usyk sat down for a lengthy interview on his personal YouTube channel and produced some fascinating insights into how he works. He revealed that during press conferences he pays more attention to people’s body language than what they say. In his last exercise with Joshua, he was reciting a sequence of 45 different numbers between one and 100, a task assigned to him by a member of his training team.
Like his great friend Vasily Lomachenko, the Ukrainian master trains his mind as well as his body.
