Floyd Mayweather Jr Is the Champ Boxing Deserves

Photos by Esther Lin for Showtime

Floyd Mayweather, Jr. knew what he was doing when he ditched the name “Pretty Boy.” Beauty is hard to grasp. Just look at the general wave of meh sweeping the Internets after his latest masterful performance.

Mike Tyson tweeted, “We waited 5 years for that… #underwhelmed #MayPac”

Everyone’s a critic. The publicity surrounding this overdue welterweight showdown swept up writers and fans who normally ignore the sport. Pundits professed hope that a dynamic contest – the word “welter” means “to writhe or toss” – would convince the visitors to stay awhile. But anyone who knows Money knew the odds of that were impossibly long.

“Welter” also means “to wallow, to become deeply sunk, soaked, or involved.” Those of us who wallow daily in boxing’s grime understand that Mayweather does not make art for the masses. The 24/7 tackiness of his extra-ring persona obscures this.

Hoping that Mayweather’s deconstruction of an autumnal Pacquiao will thrill casual viewers is like hoping the Wiz Khalifa fan club will start lining up to hear avant-garde jazz.*

Mayweather’s sublime defense, timing, and mastery of the psychological aspects of battle are not things that reveal themselves at first sight. His personality is similarly obscure.**

Why should everything be easy to parse in 140 characters? Boxing’s allure is how simple it is – two men (or women) trying to bash each other’s heads in – yet how simultaneously dense with emotion, technique, and moral ambiguity.

Over at the Undefeated, Brandon Simeo Starkey explores Floyd’s place in boxing’s race game and provides an insightful analysis of how integration has stifled the African-American boxing tradition.

The parallels with jazz are striking: Niche arts that were once mainstream, both retain cachet within black culture despite having shifted to other demographics. Jazz isn’t what it used to be, and neither is boxing. Attempts to market this fight as the next Ali-Frazier or Hagler-Hearns only highlighted this decline.

For many critics, this is as it should be. Starkey writes, “Given its corrupt and racist past, boxing deserves Floyd Mayweather in its afterlife. He is the sin that sin produced, the embodiment of desperate capitalistic values, a predator desecrating the legacies of predators who passed for American heroes.”

It is easy to hate Floyd if you already hated boxing. Those of us who love boxing – and its African American tradition in particular – hear in Floyd a last echo of jazz in this hip hop age. Hidden behind the rapper’s swagger is a working class artist, a man who does something real with his hands.

“Floyd trains like he’s a broke motherfucker,” a Vegas cruiserweight once told me, looking pale and shaken by the memory of Mayweather’s fury in training.

Boxing is more than its marquee events and venal professional game. It is what happens inside the gyms, too.

For the boys I train in East Flatbush, many of whom will never compete, boxing is solace. Floyd is a spark to their imagination. He holds that part of themselves that is still undefeated.

So what if his 48-0 record has been carefully assembled. Rocky Marciano’s 49 wins without a loss are by no means irreproachable. Sometimes you’ve gotta be a little slick to get over.

We get the hero we deserve. Maybe if we were better, Floyd would be better, too.

*I love Wiz Khalifa. When I am very sad I put “No Sleep” on endless repeat on my iPhone and pretend I’ve been partying all night with a celebrity entourage. But this is not music that requires active listening. It is made for my machine, going directly into my eardrums without context.

**A few responses to everybody who’s like “How can you be into Floyd when he beats women?” 

First of all, I do have personal experience with domestic violence. A lot of women in boxing do. If I sound flip, just think of me as one of those clowns who are crying inside. 

Secondly, I decided long ago that I loved Ezra Pound and Wagner and PG Wodehouse even though they were all Nazis, and I bet you the cost of the next PPV that plenty of the artists and athletes *you* dig have beat their wives, raised fighting dogs, or otherwise been atrocious human beings. Because art and personality are different things, and also because wounds make us strive. 

Thirdly, or whatever number we’re up to, since when have sportswriters given a shit about feminism? News flash, douchebags: I’ve watched you creeping on the Corona Girls and heard the blowjob jokes on your podcast. I saw you elbow that photographer out of the way so you could get your shot. She was in high heels. It’s hard to work a fight in high heels. If you gave a shit about feminism, you’d write about Pacquiao’s stance on birth control. You’d cover a woman boxer without mentioning her diet, how hot she is, or how she got raped as a kid. You’d talk to me without lying in ambush for my ignorance. Go read some fucking Virginia Woolf and leave Floyd alone.