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Business News/ News / Business Of Life/  Boxing’s bad-boy brand
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Boxing’s bad-boy brand

Floyd Mayweather Jr occupies a somewhat special 21st century status as a boxing bad boy: insanely wealthy, entitled, unpunished, well-protected

Mayweather (left) beat Pacquiao in the 2 May fight. Photo: Steve Marcus/ReutersPremium
Mayweather (left) beat Pacquiao in the 2 May fight. Photo: Steve Marcus/Reuters

OTHERS :

A week before Floyd Mayweather Jr and Manny Pacquiao met in Las Vegas, US, for their “reunification" bout, another fight had taken place in New York’s Madison Square Garden. For a boxing title that was once most sought after and widely followed across the planet: heavyweight champion of the world.

On 25 April, Wladimir Klitschko, who is known but not obsessively followed like the heavyweight champions of the past, defended his title against American Bryant Jennings. The Garden was full, there were a few movie stars in attendance but the news didn’t exactly reverberate through homes and on the street and every form of media known to man.

That happened the following Saturday, on 2 May. On a talk show, William Rhoden, who has been a New York Times sports columnist for over three decades, said that the last time he’d been to Las Vegas for a big bout was when Mike Tyson took a piece off Evander Holyfield’s ear. That was in June 1997, when Sachin Tendulkar was India’s cricket captain, a mobile phone call cost around 16 a minute, and Google was still a year away.

Could Tyson versus Holyfield have been the last time the wider world paid attention to a boxing bout? Did bitten ears act as a future deterrent? Maybe that, maybe the constant disputes between professional boxing bodies out of the Americas—four in all, until no one could keep track—took their toll. At the moment, there is also a fifth body awarding world champion belts through its own system of rankings, a boxing magazine called The Ring. No wonder we lost interest.

The Mayweather-Pacquiao fight grabbed attention for two reasons: the prize purse it offered and the boxers it featured. The total purse offering was not announced officially, though an estimated figure hovers around $300 million ( 1,890 crore), with a 60-40 split in Mayweather’s favour.

The personalities involved made for the simplest marketing of the fight: East vs West, the bad boy in Money Mayweather versus the devout, born-again, Filipino Congressman (who, it must be mentioned, does not support contraception for the poorest women in his country).

The television coverage of the Mayweather-Pacquiao fight was a testosterone-soaked, amped-up adoration of the event, the money it involved and the celebrities it reeled in. The news about expensive tickets and the sight of Michael Jordan, Robert De Niro, Justin Bieber and Mark Wahlberg produced that old commentators’ favourite: “It doesn’t get bigger than this." Should’ve worked this out much earlier: The Indian Premier League commentary borrows heavily from the pro-boxing boys. Everything, every day, is the Big Show.

Except that pro boxing had not had a Big Show for ages until last Saturday. In India, we could watch it on our cable connections without having to pay for the view. Not a manic fan of boxing, I watched because these were supposed to be the best fighters of their generation. I had heard about Pacquiao and always found Mayweather’s name at the top of all “highest-paid" athlete lists, and needed to see what the fuss was about.

While watching Pacquiao’s energetic aggression and Mayweather’s technical expertise, it was easy to see the crowd had bought into the marketing around the bout. They chanted good boy Pacquiao’s name, while bad boy Mayweather was booed roundly. Mayweather played to type, climbing up the ropes and preening, crowing and heckling the crowd after the bad boy had been declared the winner.

There is no shortage of bad- and very-bad-boy personalities in professional boxing. Sonny Liston had a criminal record and links with the mafia. Muhammad Ali’s bad-boy status was rooted in his political views during an era of extreme racial tension in the 1960s. He was pilloried by the establishment for what were logical arguments about race and the futility of war. Tyson served three years in jail for rape, and has a rap sheet related to violence and drugs which could possibly be longer than the 5ft, 11-inch wingspan of his arms. The list of boxers who spent and still spend time in prison is a long, depressing one. Bad boys have been punished.

Mayweather, however, occupies a somewhat special 21st century status as a boxing bad boy: insanely wealthy, entitled, unpunished, well-protected. He spent two months in prison in a domestic battery case and has five convictions of battery and assault involving women. According to American sportswriter Dave Zirin, on the same talk show with Rhoden, as many as “21 calls" are said to have been made to the police from Mayweather’s home “begging for police intervention because he was beating women". In a 2013 documentary about his life called 30 Days In May, his sponsors Showtime thought nothing of having Mayweather equate women to cars: “Even though you can’t drive 10 cars at one time, you got people that got 10 cars. So you’re able to keep maintenance on 10 cars. So I feel that as far as it comes to females, that same thing should apply. If you’re able to take care of 20, then you should have 20."

That this has been spouted and circulated as a statement acceptable enough to be retained by the documentary editors is not a surprise. We live in a time when women’s rights continue to be denied and fought for, where technological progress is given greater priority than social justice.

That this statement has come from a rich, wealthy man, a champion athlete, is hardly shocking either. Caveman views about women are common in male sport and pro boxing in the US was perhaps the precursor for decorative female backdrops like the Formula One pit babes: pro boxing’s are “ring girls" dressed in crop tops and hot pants. For “glamour." They don’t even bother to offer the tired chestnut: “to get more women involved in the sport."

In the Mayweather case, what is staggering is the lack of action following his criminal conviction, particularly given the history of severe action against fighters of the past for a range of reasons. Ali lost his title, had his passport revoked and spent three and a half years outside the ring for refusing to sign up for the Vietnam war. Julio Cesar Chavez Jr, a six-time world champion in three weight categories, was suspended for nine months and fined $900,000 for testing positive for marijuana (the fine was later brought down to $100,000). The licence of a journeyman boxer called Joel Casamayor was revoked and a $10,000 fine was issued for the same reason.

The very same Nevada State Athletic Commission that acted against Chavez Jr and Casamayor has bent backwards in Mayweather’s case. Mayweather’s boxing licence was reissued without a squeak—no penalty, no suspension—after his release from prison. In any case, the state justice system had already permitted him to delay his jail term so that he could go through one scheduled bout before heading for prison. The public’s acceptance of the “bad-boy" image is one thing; the institutionalized acceptance and airbrushing of Mayweather’s criminal record is quite another.

Professional boxing has long abandoned the need to tell the difference between a “brand", which Mayweather is seen as, and the other word that is used casually along with it: ambassador. No wonder the wider world outside American pay-per-view stopped caring.

Sharda Ugra is a senior editor at Espncricinfo.

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Published: 06 May 2015, 07:45 PM IST
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