Honestly, last night’s combined Welterweight championship boxing match between Manny Pacquiao and Floyd Mayweather was a lil’ bit boring...unless you were paying attention to what was going on outside the ring.
The highly randomized selection of superstars watching the cautious Mayweather edge out the electric Pacquiao at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas included Michael Jordan, the Beebs, Jimmy Kimmel, Diddy, Mark Wahlberg, Batmans Affleck and Bale, Charles Barkley, Jaime Lannister (ahem, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau), 50 Cent, Rupert Murdoch, Queen Beyoncé and King Jay Z, Lil’ Wayne, Stephen Moyer and Anna Paquin, Michael J. Fox, Niki Minaj, Diane Kruger and Joshua Jackson, Jake Gyllenhaal, Clint Eastwood, Claire Danes, Matt Bomer, Robert DeNiro, Paris Hilton, two out of three Jonas Brothers, Denzel Washington, that creepy, giant-headed Burger King and many more. You can scratch your head now.
As well, the match drew in hundreds of millions of viewers worldwide and many, many times more dollars in advertising and fees. At only 36 minutes, it may be the most watched, most expensive spectator event per second in history. Matter of fact, pre-fight hype drew so many U.S. fans to pay per view that Time Warner Cable actually broke.
Far more troubling, though, are the underlying political and ethical issues. The money-worshiping Mayweather has a long history of domestic violence that the media seems to ignore. Even after serving prison time, he’s so strikingly unrepentant that he used his clout to ban journalists who’ve criticized him for his crimes from covering the fight. It’s stuff like this that had the audience booing the champion throughout.
The overwhelming fan favorite with bottomless charm and homeless-to-hero story, Pacquiao, too, is a troublesome pick thanks to his Christian fundamentalist views on homosexuality. Basically, the $99.95 you might have spent on this fight would have gone into the pockets of two guys you’d never want to meet.
So, yeah, even though the actual event was a snoozefest, the controversial, overhyped, star-studded Mayweather vs. Pacquiao was the “Fight of the Century” we were promised—ringside, that is. We just live in a kinda weird century. See for yourself ahead.