It's not as if last night's exhibition between Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Logan Paul established a new low in boxing. But a promoter would have to work pretty hard to get any lower.
There was little to take away from the event. Paul, a "YouTube celebrity," failed to make us think he was a star in the making. As for Mayweather, he looked nothing like the greatest fighter of his era, not even a 44 year-old version.
"You've got to realize, I'm not 21 any more," Mayweather said. "It's good to move around with these young guys."
Paul, who finished the fight on his feet, was ecstatic. "This is one of the greatest moments of my life," he said.
But if going the eight round distance with a certified Hall of Fame fighter was only "one of" his greatest moments, we can't imagine what Paul considers his absolute zenith. Maybe he was more fulfilled the time he filmed a corpse in Japan's "suicide forest" and uploaded the footage to his YouTube channel.
As a YouTuber, Logan Paul is the equivalent of the schoolyard creep who eats nasty things on a dare. As a fighter, he's on par with the characters we used to see on Fox's Celebrity Boxing show of 20 years ago, back when one of The Partridge Family kids flailed away at one of The Brady Bunch kids.
"I don't want anyone to tell me anything is impossible ever again," Paul said. "Everyone can beat the odds and do great things in life."
The crowd at Miami's Hard Rock Stadium may not have known what odds he referred to, nor did viewers at home. Home viewers may have beaten some odds just in seeing the fight; the Showtime PPV feed was so botched that many spent the night staring at a blank screen. What would they have missed for their 50 bucks? The chance to watch Paul wrap his long arms around Mayweather, and to hear a bunch of loopy Showtime commentators shout BING on those few occasions when Mayweather actually landed a punch. But anyone with money to burn on such a farce can't be pitied. They had to know what was coming.
Paul appeared to be as big as a Viking chieftain, but was content to clinch his much smaller and much older opponent. The fight had no judges, so if Paul was still standing at the end he could claim a sort of moral victory for YouTubers everywhere. And though Mayweather scored with the occasional punch, he was simply too little to hurt the man in front of him.
A fighter with Mayweather's vast experience was expected to dominate a novice such as Paul and knock him out. When this didn't happen, observers were puzzled. Did Mayweather let Paul survive? Mayweather offered no excuses after the event.
"I had fun," he said.
In some ways, it was like any other Mayweather fight, his opponent tiring as each round passed, Mayweather landing his sneak shots. The difference here was that Mayweather spent more time coming forward, while Paul backed away, a slightly dim mastiff intimidated by a feisty schnauzer.
Suppose you were Mayweather, and you stood to make millions of dollars to fight a character from YouTube. Sure, you could do as your old rival, Manny Pacquiao, was doing, and fight tough men like Errol Spence or Keith Thurman. But would you really risk your health against such young tigers? Of course not. Add Paul to Mayweather's recent list of opponents - MMA star Conor McGregor, who'd never boxed professionally, and Tenshin Nasukawa, the tiny fellow "knocked out" by Mayweather for what appeared to be a gathering of Japanese businessmen - and it is clear that Mayweather has become the high priest of novelty boxing.
As it turned out, Mayweather did the right thing by fighting Paul. He made a lot of money and left the ring without a scratch. Also, as it turned out, he looked his age. At times he looked like a man struggling with a King-size mattress. There's talk that he might fight Paul's brother, Jake, who made a scene at a recent press conference by stealing Mayweather's hat. We may be starved for fights, but we don't need another round of Mayweather versus the Paul family.
After the final bell, Logan Paul did a handstand in the ring. Some observers compared him to Rocky Balboa going the distance with Apollo Creed. Of course, the fictional Balboa was a journeyman who lived in a hovel. Paul lives in a mansion in Puerto Rico and once spent $2 million on Pokemon cards.
Still, there's no reason to dislike Paul. Perhaps we should get used to his type. We're bound to see more fighters just like him, guys with no real credentials but big followings on Twitter. If Sunday's exhibition draws anywhere close to a million buys, we may see a new generation of boxers born on our social media feeds. In our media-soaked world, being a cheap celebrity may be the quickest route to a title shot.
- Don Stradley
