Keidel: What Is It About Mayweather That Has America Compelled?
By Jason Keidel
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The old boxing axiom tells us the sport is only as strong as the heavyweight division, which would be a problem since its champions are largely a constellation of consonants, from places we couldn't find on a map.
So maybe we need to adjust our metrics. Maybe the meat is in the middle. Somewhere around welterweight, perhaps, where Floyd Mayweather (46-0) is scheduled to fight Marcos Maidana (35-4) on Saturday at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, exactly 13 floors beneath my hotel room.
If you can get over the culture shock of the new Vegas, where the vines of gentrification are matched only by Manhattan, then you can still see that Mayweather matters -- to commerce, to Vegas and to boxing. Men and women of all class, color and clothing have parachuted into Vegas to see the one boxer who still has America's undivided attention.
Even in a sport as emaciated as boxing, Mayweather has remained our nation's highest-paid athlete, which is startling when you consider that we don't exactly have a dearth of decent ballplayers who have long been reduced to single-name sobriquets. LeBron, Peyton and Tiger all look financially upward at the loquacious champion.
Of course, you may find a feeling of guilt, of unspoken sin when you buy or attend a Mayweather fight. It's no secret that he's a bad boy. And he's made no secret of it, either. You can decide whether it's necessary, boosts his ego or boosts his income. You can watch Peyton and Eli Manning, Russell Wilson, Derek Jeter or LeBron James prosper and wonder if Mayweather's histrionics are essential to his sport or his warped version of salesmanship.
But there's no disputing his success in the ring, where the 37-year-old Mayweather will fight Father Time as well as Maidana to extend his record to 47-0. Mayweather has used some mutation of Muhammad Ali and 1990s rap videos to express his worldview and develop his sense of showmanship. It's vulgar, but it's victorious. At least if you define success by record and receipts.
Maybe Mayweather gets it and we don't. Perhaps the new paradigm dictates that no volume equals the new vice, that arrogance is the new currency that carries athletes into celebrity. Nah. Let's just say it "works" for Mayweather.
And there's the rub. Do we watch Mayweather for the beautiful, boxing aesthetic or do we simply want to see him pummeled? Unless you're related to or deeply ensconced in his entourage, it's hard to imagine you're in verbal or emotional lockstep with his outbursts.
In part of most men is the macho impulse, the idea that we can not only knock anyone out, but tell him about it beforehand. So, in that regard, Mayweather appeals to our instinctive sense of barbarism. But we also like to think our iconic athletes reached the high rungs of success mostly through humility and hard work, even if that's an ancient or even archaic expectation.
We see the Bentleys and the women and the mansion, yet we've never really seen the man who made all of that possible. If he ever let us in, we could spend more time dissecting his rise from poverty than his penchant for profanity. But the public mask seems to be the only one he wears, or at least the one he's willing to let us see.
But see him we will. He can sleepwalk through a million pay-per-view buys, has a $200 million contract with Showtime and has enough limos and ladies to satisfy the most testosterone-drenched teenager. Whether we watch with one or two eyes open, we do watch.
Mayweather, of course, is not a teen anymore, far closer to his boxing sunset than his sunrise. And maybe that's why he's still worth watching. Someday this act will end. Some will cheer his first defeat; others will lament it.
But love or loathe Mayweather, he has sold us on some part of his narrative. Which might mean part of us can relate to him, even if that makes us cringe.
Follow Jason on Twitter @JasonKeidel.
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