Mayweather vs. Pacquiao Results: Did fight live up to the hype?

The fight of the century took place in Las Vegas on Saturday night, but did the Mayweather vs. Pacquiao results live up to the hype?

For over a half decade, we all talked about and anticipated a fight between Manny Pacquiao and Floyd Mayweather but it never came to fruition. For one reason or another, the fight was delayed, put off and canceled. But on Saturday night, in front of a sold out crowd at the MGM Grand, the two titans of boxing stepped into the ring with one another and gave us the fight that was being touted as the bout of the century.

But did the fight live up to the hype?

To be fair, it was a herculean task to try and live up to the hype that was built up not just all week long in Las Vegas but for the last five years of our lives and even longer. It was a half decade ago that the fight was supposed to happen but we tend to forget that we’ve been asking for this fight long before that.

On Saturday night we finally saw the fight and there are two camps reacting to the fight.

No, It Didn’t Live Up To The Hype

It’s hard to say that the fight lived up to the hype, but it’s not to the fault of the fighters. Both Manny Pacquiao and Floyd Mayweather were fast landing punches and bouncing around. They looked like they were fighting in 2010 — but they weren’t. There’s no way around that and the fact that they both came out so fast that it made us wish it was five years ago even more than we wanted it before they stepped into the ring.

That’s the tragedy of the fight, as they looked so good the whole fight and they both had so much energy the whole way through.

Aside from the obvious, the fight just wasn’t going to live up to the hype no matter what. You can only set the bar so high before it’s insurmountable, and that was the case long before this fight was even set up. This was a classic Phantom Menace case, and that may be true of the next fight they have with one another as well.

Just like how the bar was set impossibly high for the a Star Wars movie fans had to wait 16 years for, all of that was compounded into five years of hype for this Mayweather-Pacquiao fight.

This bout was simply never going to live up to they hype, and the decision that crowned Mayweather the champion only intensifies the anticlimactic spin being put on the fight.

Yes, It Lived Up To The Hype

On the other hand, basically all of what can be used as evidence that the fight didn’t live up to the hype can be spun to say it did. Sure, Mayweather and Pacquiao were older than they were five years ago and their speed made us wish it was 2010 — but they were lighting fast and full of hellfire five years after they were supposed to fight.

All of the fears that this fight was going to feature two men past their primes and fighting as shells of their former selves were put to rest almost immediately. There was no denying that we were all thoroughly entertained by what we saw, even if we had to wait to see it.

The fight lasted a full 12 rounds, which was another instance of the world getting it’s moneys worth to of the fight. Sure, we may have seen Floyd Mayweather win just like we thought he would, but we also saw Manny Pacquaio come close at times to getting ahead in the fight in the middle rounds of the bout.

You would be lying fi you said you didn’t find yourself jumping up or hollering at the TV a few times during the fight, and if that’s not a fight that lives up to the hype — as it entertained us — then you were looking at the bout all wrong.

More from Boxing

Home/Boxing