Floyd Mayweather artistry shows that boxing is not dead, as often stated

BOXING is one of sport's great survivors. For all of its moral ambiguity, it touches something deep in those who watch and participate in it.

Floyd Mayweather

I SUPPOSE it's time to admit that Ron Lewis was right all along. Ron is the excellent boxing writer for The Times and has travelled the world indulging an obsession with the fight game that he has nurtured since watching Dave Boy Green at the Albert Hall in 1978.

It has been a privileged existence, watching classic bouts in places such as Tokyo and New York, but it has also carried a perennial irritation: the drip, drip of negativity; pundits, often with little association with the sport, claiming that boxing is dead; that it is on its last legs; that it is a sport out of sympathy with the times.

I have written a few columns of that type myself, to be honest, and on each occasion a gentle rebuke from Ron has arrived the next day. Dead? What about the brilliance of Floyd Mayweather? What about the scintillating bout between Manny Pacquiao and Juan Manuel Marquez in 2012? If boxing is dead, how do you account for its vast popularity in the United States, Asia and around the world, Ron would ask.

On Saturday night we had another reminder of the enduring appeal of boxing when Mayweather took on Saul Alvarez for the WBC and WBA light-middleweight titles in Las Vegas. Mayweather is not the most savoury character, but then boxing has always had its share of controversial champions. In the ring, however, he is Nureyev. Perhaps no active sportsman demonstrates a more perfect comprehension of time and space.

The 36-year-old has dominated the sport for 17 years, taking on many of the most accomplished boxers in the world, and has yet to be defeated. His weapons are not power and ferocity, but craft and ring intelligence. When Alvarez essayed to smite him, Mayweather computed his intentions even as they were being formed and caused his opponent to hit thin air, or, at best, a shoulder. His own shots were sharp and unerringly accurate. With Mayweather, there is no spillage.

Those who abhor the moral basis of boxing - and there are many - often scoff when it is described as an artistic pursuit, but in the hands of Mayweather, it is nothing less than that.

Violence is, of course, central to the sport. It is bacchanalian. The basic intention of both pugilists is to render the other unconscious. But there is an aesthetic dimension, too. It is for this reason, above all else, that boxing captivated Ernest Hemingway, A. J. Liebling, Norman Mailer and many others.

Even on the most basic analysis, boxing is flourishing. In 2012, Mayweather was the highest-paid sportsman on the planet, eclipsing even Roger Federer and Tiger Woods.

He earned more than dollars $US85 million from bouts with Victor Ortiz and Miguel Cotto. Second on the rich list last year was another boxer, Pacquiao, who earned $62m for his bouts with Marquez and Tim Bradley.

This year Mayweather is certain to top the list again. He will receive a record guarantee of dollars $41.5m for the bout with Alvarez and is likely to earn more once the pay-per-view receipts have been totted up.

His career earnings have swelled to more $350m.

A dying sport? Not if the democracy of the free market is any benchmark.

In Britain, too, boxing continues to demonstrate vitality. Only yesterday, the Carl Froch versus George Groves bout, scheduled for November 23, sold out in 11 minutes.

Many waited on the phone for half an hour before finding out that all 20,000 tickets had been snapped up. At the Olympics Games in London last year, it was the boxing venue that registered the loudest cheers from the audience, measuring more than 113 decibels.

It is no secret that boxing is poorly managed. The proliferation of sanctioning bodies and the greed of promoters have leeched credibility from the sport. In recent years fans have been particularly vexed that Mayweather and Pacquiao, the world's undisputed superstars, have not faced each other, and now probably never will. This tells its own story. How many other sports would have grown in the teeth of such administrative incompetence and crass infighting?

How big, one wonders, would boxing have been if it were run with a modicum of vision? If there were eight undisputed champions in the classic weight divisions, rather than the alphabet confusion we see today? If judges had an iota of competence, unlike C.J. Ross, who scored the Mayweather-Alvarez bout a draw, a decision that so violated good sense that she should never be allowed to officiate again?

The ironies are deep. Any right-minded person who has sat ringside and heard the particular sound of a gloved fist making contact with a human jaw will have recoiled. There is something profoundly unedifying, too, about the blood-lust that so often characterises those who congregate around boxing, baying for the next instalment of pain just as soon as one boxer has been carried, prostrate, from the ring.

But boxing is about more than blood and voyeurism. It is also about courage, fortitude and craft. That is why it has existed, in various forms, throughout human history, including in the writings of Homer, and is likely to survive for decades, despite the regular funeral orations in newspapers and elsewhere.

Boxing is one of sport's great survivors, as Ron often reminds us. For all its moral ambiguity, it touches something deep in those who watch and who participate in it.

Mayweather, for his part, has forged his place in the rich tapestry of boxing. He has entered the ring on 45 occasions and has departed each time with his undefeated record intact. He is the outstanding pugilist of the past quarter-century and deserves his place not merely among the legendary boxers of the last century, but among the top sportspeople in the world today.

When inhabiting a square of canvas enclosed by parallel ropes, Mayweather is nothing less than a genius.

The Times