{"id":6404,"date":"2015-03-12T22:02:15","date_gmt":"2015-03-13T05:02:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/BigJimIndustries.com\/wordpress\/?p=6404"},"modified":"2015-03-17T22:13:26","modified_gmt":"2015-03-18T05:13:26","slug":"6404","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/2015\/03\/12\/6404\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Pacquiao-Mayweather Matters"},"content":{"rendered":"

from The New Yorker<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

How Much Does Pacquiao-Mayweather Matter?<\/h1>\n

BY\u00a0KELEFA SANNEH<\/a><\/b>
\n\"Floyd<\/a>Floyd Mayweather and Manny Pacquiao.\u00a0<\/span>CREDIT<\/span>PHOTOGRAPH BY ESTHER LIN\/SHOWTIME\u00ae<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

In a humid boxing gym in Hollywood on Tuesday, members of the sports media outnumbered world-class boxers by about twenty to one. They had come to watch Manny Pacquiao, by most measures the second-best welterweight in the world, prepare for his fight against Floyd Mayweather, Jr., by all measures the best. As Pacquiao shadowboxed in the ring, Michael Koncz, one of his closest advisers, looked at the reporters and videographers and seemed to wince. \u201cAfter these two weeks, that\u2019s it!\u201d he said. He had agreed to a brief media invasion, but he wanted as much brevity as possible.<\/p>\n

Fred Sternburg, Pacquiao\u2019s publicist, just laughed. Pacquiao-Mayweather will almost certainly be the most lucrative boxing match in history\u2014it\u2019s being called the new Fight of the Century, and it requires a publicity push to match. The fight is scheduled for May 2nd, in Las Vegas, and until then everyone in both fighters\u2019 orbits will have to accommodate and ignore the non-stop stream of outsiders bearing notepads and cameras. The fight will be broadcast on pay-per-view, as part of an unusual arrangement between HBO and Showtime\u2014the rival fighters are attached to rival premium cable networks, who therefore have had to find a way to collaborate. As far as the fight\u2019s promoters are concerned, members of the media have one job to do: help them entice more paying customers.<\/p>\n

The promotion began in earnest the next day, with the Press Conference of the Century, which took over the Nokia Theatre, in downtown Los Angeles. There was a red carpet, where each fighter could take a hundred-yard stroll in front of broadcast media. A number of outlets, including ESPN and CNN, had erected temporary anchor desks, which heightened the illusion that something important was about to happen.<\/p>\n

Mayweather versus Pacquiao has been the most talked-about match-up in boxing for more than six years, and many observers had been\u00a0skeptical<\/a>, in recent months, that the fighters would finally agree to fight. Now that the date is set, boxing fans can go back to doing what they do best: complain\u2014in this case, about the fact that it didn\u2019t\u00a0take place<\/a>\u00a0years ago<\/a>, when both men were younger and quicker.<\/p>\n

[ click to continue reading at The New Yorker<\/a> ]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

from The New Yorker How Much Does Pacquiao-Mayweather Matter? BY\u00a0KELEFA SANNEH Floyd Mayweather and Manny Pacquiao.\u00a0CREDITPHOTOGRAPH BY ESTHER LIN\/SHOWTIME\u00ae In a humid boxing gym in Hollywood on Tuesday, members of the sports media outnumbered world-class boxers by about twenty to one. They had come to watch Manny Pacquiao, by most measures the second-best welterweight in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6404","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture-art"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6404","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/26"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6404"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6404\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6404"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6404"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6404"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}