The Big Fight has become all but extinct, keeping company with the Dodo and the door-to-door encyclopedia salesman.
As Evander Holyfield, who was in a few capital-letter bouts in his day, said, “Boxing has been drowning. It has been bad for a while.”
Out of the desert, like a mirage, a faint and wavy memory of better days for the sport, comes something resembling a mega-fight. On Saturday, Floyd Mayweather and Manny Pacquaio finally engage.
It amuses Atlanta’s five-time former heavyweight champion that it is “two small guys, not two big guys, who have the world on edge.” The 147-pounders are billing themselves as the stars of the most current “fight of the century,” and there seems to be little competition for or argument against the title.
Holyfield, who hasn’t been in the ring since 2011 and whose last major fight came against Lennox Lewis in 1999, has a stake in Saturday’s goings-on. A charitable one. Now he’s in partnership with Mitt Romney instead of Don King. The former presidential candidate reached out to the former champ, asking Holyfield to be part of a Mayweather-Pacquaio fight-night experience being auctioned on eBay.
The auction, which runs through Tuesday, is billed as a chance to be Holyfield’s guest for the fight and includes airfare, hotel, dinner and a seat next to the former champ at the MGM Grand arena. The whole of the winning bid will go to CharityVision, which fights blindness in developing countries.
“Sometimes it only takes a small procedure and you can restore someone’s sight,” said Holyfield, who was introduced to the charity by Romney. The two are even scheduled to spar (or some version thereof) during a CharityVision fundraiser next month in Utah.
The online site for the auction is eBay.com/CharityVision. Must be a big fight — the bidding went over $30,000 on Friday.
The scarcity of tickets for the fight — reports are that only 500 were made available to the public while the rest will go to the high-rollers and the well-connected — likely will contribute to the demand for this one-person package.
The experience will marry the star-gazing that goes with such big fights with what is anticipated to be the unbeaten Mayweather’s greatest challenge.
“Boxing has been riding on (Mayweather’s) back. And Pacquaio is the only person who can give him a run for his money,” Holyfield said. The two had sparred verbally long distance for years before being at long last dropped into the same ring.
As well as a clash of large, if somewhat past their peak, talents, Mayweather-Pacquaio is the kind of meeting of divergent styles that brings interest to the boil.
In one corner: “Floyd is a defensive fighter, a great defensive fighter,” Holyfield said. “And when you have a great defense, it puts you in position to flush your opponent (with the counter-punch).”
In the other corner: “Pacquaio will throw a lot of punches. He is not the kind who is going to get frustrated if you block a lot of his shots. He’ll just throw punches from different angles, and throw a lot of them.”
That means there might be someone to carry the fight to Mayweather, whose style has not always led to the most compelling of evenings. And, Holyfield said, if the decision is left to the judges, Pacquaio’s activity may serve him well.
“It will be interesting. Floyd may have to take a little more risk against Pacquaio.”
So, who’s going to win?
In his case, Holyfield often fed off those who picked against him in many of his spotlight fights. In this case, he’s offering neither fighter any such ammo. He’s dug in, and you can’t drag a prediction out of him.
“I don’t know who’s going to win,” Holyfield said. “I like both guys as people. And it doesn’t matter what I say, it’s not going to make either guy better.”
He’s long past the point of taking sides when one of these increasingly rare fights that matter come along. And the best part now is that when he’s giving back, and it’s with a smile to the highest bidder, not with a short right hook.
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