Psst! Boxing Doesn’t Need to Be Saved

Let’s not do it again.

Nothing against Floyd Mayweather, Jr. and Oscar De La Hoya. The two great champions gave us a pretty good fight on Saturday (or early Sunday for those of us on EST) at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas -- but not a great one. There was not a single moment, flurry nor punch delivered during the 12-round super welterweight championship that we’ll recall with I-saw-it-live goose bumps decades from now. But the fight delivered on the promise. Both men fought well, fought hard. They gave us a good show.

The 34-year-old De La Hoya, an iconic champion and burgeoning power promoter, showed heart and courage, until he began fighting on fumes. He took it to his younger, faster, smaller (and louder!) opponent in the early rounds but waned late and did not have enough fight in his arms to do any damage when it mattered. Mayweather, in his prime at 30 years old, feigned and moved, eluding De La Hoya after a slow start; he forced DLH to miss eight of every 10 punches. Junior connected with efficiency (though not an ounce of power) and won a split decision that really should have been unanimous.

Now what? Word out of Vegas was that the two men -- who could bank about $50 million between them for the night’s work -- would lace up the gloves for a rematch some time within the next calendar year, despite Mayweather’s unconvincing retirement talk. Junior loves money too much to quit; he loves himself too much to quit. For De La Hoya, perhaps the savviest boxer ever and the co-promoter of this fight, the green is just too enticing.

I hope they don’t. Great fights leave you wanting more. This one left me wanting to go to bed. That said it was a big night for boxing. Probably the biggest for some time to come. When the pay-per-view numbers are tallied, Mayweather-De La Hoya may be the most watched PPV boxing event ever, perhaps surpassing the 1997 heavyweight fight between Mike Tyson and Evander Holyfield. Nearly two million (1.99 million) households paid for Tyson-Holyfield II, a tad more than the 1.97 million that tuned in for the Tyson-Lennox Lewis fight two years later. Update: The numbers are in. The fight set a new record for viewers with 2.15 million households and $120 million in revenue.

Of course, those were heavyweight heavyweight fights. Conventional wisdom says the little guys just aren’t as popular, though I’m not convinced size matters--at least not in boxing. Sugar Ray Leonard, Marvin Hagler, Roberto Duran and Thomas (Hit Man) Hearns ruled the sport from the middleweight classes, just as De La Hoya and Mayweather are the faces of the sport today.

Are they the last boxing superstars? Much of the banter surrounding the fight centered on whether De La Hoya-Maywether was the last great fight, the last fight that creates any buzz outside boxing’s small circles. My former colleagues at Sports Illustrated hyperbolically called it: The Fight to Save Boxing.

Well, don’t cry for boxing. It doesn’t need saving. Yes, it’s been its own worse enemy. Name a boxing promoter and you’re putting face on the corruption and insipid match-making that are at the root of the sport’s decline. Its lack of any national standards, as well as other factors that have been widely chronicled, boxing, like horseracing and tennis (two other sports that were once among the most popular in America) is a niche sport with a few loyal, passionate fans.

And every once in awhile, the rest of us actually care about it.

That’s okay.

Boxing will never again dominate our consciousness--not like when Jack Johnson, Joe Louis and Muhammad Ali were ours. Or when Tyson, Leonard, Hearns, George Foreman, Joe Frazier, Ken Norton were ours.

That’s okay, too.

Not even if Steve Nash, Tom Brady, Roger Clemens and Andy Roddick decided to become pugilists would boxing matter to most Americans again.

The sport’s actually been surpassed by its mutant stepbrother, Ultimate Fighting, which features pimp slapping, kicking and, yes, macho champions that look like its audience. Reigning champ Chuck Liddell is hotter than Mayweather may even be in his own mind. No small feat. (In fact, UFC president Dana White tells Yahoo! Sports he’ll offer Mayweather millions to fight the UFC lightweight champion Sean Sherk; Mayweather has been critical of mixed martial arts fighters.)

At its core, with two skilled fighters inside a stark ring, boxing remains perhaps the purest of sport. Part science, part bohemian, and almost all heart, it touches a place inside most of us--the essence of our competitive spirit. We loathe it, but love it. We criticize its characters but can’t turn away.

That is why championship fights attract the A-list celebrities, and the cream among business and entertainment executives--sitting ringside next to the kings and queens of the night. It’s why boxing may be one of the most popular sports among athletes themselves.

It does not need our sympathy. It does not need to be saved.

Just wait. And keep your remote handy. We’ll be back. Hopefully for someone other than Oscar and Floyd Jr.