By: Sean Crose

There I was standing in a cold, dark room in a cold, dark building at Post University. It was a Friday night in February and I simply wanted to get home but it wasn’t meant to be. For a giant announcement had just been made, an announcement that Floyd Mayweather was finally going to face Manny Pacquiao. Talking into the phone in that dark room on that chilly February night, I asked those power players on the other line – the people who were behind the current event becoming a reality – what they thought of a possible rematch. They responded by laughing, adding that getting this first fight together was enough.

As everyone who followed the fight at the time knows, the first Mayweather-Pacquiao throwdown was something of a disappointment. Actually, it really wasn’t as bad as people make it out to be, but when you wait a long time for a fight that doesn’t end up having fireworks, people are bound to be disappointed. It’s worth keeping in mind however, that a lot has changed in the 11 years since Floyd Mayweather and Manny Pacquiao did battle in the ring. For one thing, endless negotiations are no longer as prominent as they once were in the fight game. They’re still bad but not as bad as they used to be.

Sure enough, stalled negotiations led to Mayweather-Pacquiao going down later than it should have. In truth the fight should have become a reality a few years before it did, but boxing politics – which involved networks and management companies as well as advisors and gurus of the sport – ensured that it went down belatedly. To this day, Mayweather-Pacquiao is remembered as much for poor timing as it is for a lack of action in the ring.

Now, however, we hear that Mayweather and Pacquiao are going to throw down again. This time, though, the fight will be broadcast on Netflix and it’s not going to cost anyone anything extra. The Mayweather pay-per-view against Pacquiao was about a hundred bucks a pop, if I’m not mistaken. This won’t be anywhere near that. Then again Mayweather and Pacquiao are nowhere near what they were when they first fought much less when they were in their primes. The truth however, is that as absurd as this is… and it is truly absurd… this is going to bring in a lot of money. And, let’s face it, it’ll be interesting to see where it goes.

In a world of ridiculous novelty fights, the sport of boxing could do with a lot worse than this.