Mayweather vs. Pacquiao: Doing the Math

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We are fickle people, us boxing heads, and now, having worshipped at the altar of Manny Pacquiao for most of the year, we find ourselves in a place that few anticipated. I certainly did not. I went into the Mayweather/Marquez fight confident that Floyd would win and that he would do it convincingly. I did not, however, for a moment expect that he would do it so convincingly that in the aftermath we would have reason to doubt whether we were even interested in a Mayweather/Pacquiao superfight at all.

But that is where we are. Whether you buy it or not, there's at least an argument to be made on that score, and it's being made all over the internet. Pacquiao fought Marquez twice and both times they were essentially ties. In the first fight Pac scored three touchdowns in the first two minutes of the game and Marquez came back to tie the game with a series of field goals over the next 58. In the second fight, they matched each other touchdown for touchdown the entire game and according to the judges Pacquiao kicked a field goal with time running out. All we can conclude from this is that the two teams are dead even.

This past Saturday night, Floyd beat up on Marquez like the Niners beat the Chargers that one Super Bowl where Steve Young threw about nineteen touchdown passes to Jerry Rice and assorted members of Jerry Rice's family. He beat Marquez like the Steelers playing a Div 1-A team.

And so, by the commutative property, this equation is now on the table: Mayweather > Marquez (by like infinity), Marquez = Pacquiao (give or take), therefore Mayweather > Pacquiao (by like infinity).

Even taking into account the weight issue, I still think it's reasonable that people are drawing such a conclusion. The only concrete way we have to assess fighters who haven't fought each other is to look at how they've done against similar opponents.

But if we're going to do that, we have to bring the same method of inspection to Floyd and Manny's other two common opponents, De La Hoya and Hatton.

Hatton to my mind is a push. Yes Pacquiao blew him out of the arena, but that is the way Pacquiao fights. Floyd never blows anyone out of the arena. I have a feeling that if Floyd were fighting, I don't know, Alfonso Gomez, he would take a couple of rounds to get his rhythm. Floyd dominated Hatton and then knocked him out with a devastating shot. That Pacquiao did it quicker does not earn him any style points in my book.

De La Hoya, however, is a different story. It is without question that Oscar gave Floyd some problems, particularly early in the fight. Those problems to my eyes were merely a question of Oscar's size. I don't remember the unofficial weights that night, but I do recall that the fight looked like a middleweight fighting a welter. And I remember seeing a look in Floyd's eyes early on that I haven't seen there very often, a look not of fear exactly, but definitely of concern. Oscar was jumping on him and trying to mug him in there with his sheer mass, and the advantage that he had in the mass department made it briefly seem like it might be a doable venture.

Of course, it wasn't in the end. Floyd got his bearings, and Oscar lost heart, wearied of chasing Floyd around and eating potshots as his reward for trying to close the distance. As I wrote at the time of the fight, "at the very point at which Joe Frazier used to SERIOUSLY start to stalk his prey, Oscar effectively gave up." He got himself a split decision for his efforts that I thought was highly dubious - I don't have my scorecard on hand, but in my memory I scored it 8-4 in rounds for Floyd, and I thought I was being generous to Oscar with that.

Pacquiao, though, needed no scorecards with De La Hoya. He blew him out of the arena too, embarrassed him, made him quit on his stool and then made him quit forever.

The disparity between Manny and Floyd's performances against Oscar is not quite so great as the one between their performances against Marquez. But they're definitely in the same ballpark. And if, as I am inclined to do, one is going to explain that disparity away for one fight based on the weight issue, then we have to be prepared to do the same for the other. I fully believe that Floyd had a tougher time with Oscar than Pacquiao did because he was fighting him at a weight at which Oscar was comfortable. I am quite sure that if Floyd had fought the version of De La Hoya that Manny did at 147 (or in Oscar's case 145) pounds, he would have schooled him like he did Marquez.

But there is no question that the same is true of the Marquez comparison. Pacquiao had more troubles with Marquez because he was fighting him at the weight that Marquez's body is right for. What would happen if the 130-pound Mayweather of ten years ago fought the 130-pound Marquez of March, 2008? Well, it's hard to say. I tend to think that Floyd would still win, and still win pretty easily. I just think Marquez sets up very well for him irrespective of weight. But I certainly think it would be a closer contest than the one we saw Saturday night.

Finally, we have to face the fact that the boxing commutative property never has been anything but a parlor game, and is far, far from being an immutable law. We have recent, shocking evidence of this in the sequence of Margarito > Cotto, Cotto > Mosley (barely) and therefore… no. It didn't work out. Mosley > Margarito (by a lot) and we're back to the drawing board.

Then there's the most famous example of the flawed equation: Frazier = Ali, Foreman > Frazier (by a LOT) and therefore… The Rumble in the Jungle and the world-shocking and whatnot.

Still, I think even if we're going to play the commutative property game with Mayweather and Pacquiao right now, we have to have longer memories and consider De La Hoya as well as Marquez as our test examples. If we deem one of these cases to be invalid due to questions of weight, then we must do the same with the other.

Where it comes out, for me, is that I'm still VERY interested in Pacquiao vs. Mayweather, granted of course that Pac beats Cotto, which maybe we are right in thinking today is even a bigger "if" than we did a week ago. That said, if Pac does beat Cotto, however he does it, the Mayweather fight will seem even more of an imperative. Shane Mosley makes a compelling case on his own behalf for the Floyd fight, and he may be able to beat either Pacquiao or Mayweather. I myself think how he would fare against Pacquiao would depend on the weight - 140 seems to me too low for a 38-year-old man who has looked more than comfortable in the past at 154. Mayweather… right now I admit that I think Mayweather could handle Sugar Shane with conviction.

But here's the fact - Pacquiao and Mayweather are the two biggest names in the sport and the two guys that are vying for the pound-for-pound title out there in the world. Mayweather is undefeated. Pacquiao is on a breathtaking run of dominance. In conclusion, though I see why many are balking at the matchup in the aftermath of the Mayweather/Marquez rout, I'm still very much of the opinion that the most interesting fight in boxing right now is Pac and Money, and I very much hope it happens.

Provided, of course, that Pacquiao beats Cotto…

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