Waiting for the Fight

In the autumn of 2011, it was easy to watch a boxing match as a prelude to another one. I paid my share of the Mayweather–Ortiz pay-per-view with friends, already imagining what might happen if Mayweather won and Manny Pacquiao came through his next contest.

The match everyone wanted seemed permanently one negotiation away. It began to crowd out the fights that were actually taking place.

Márquez changes the conversation

Pacquiao’s third fight with Juan Manuel Márquez, on 12 November 2011, deserved to be considered on its own terms. Márquez’s counterpunching kept interrupting the idea that Pacquiao could simply impose his pace. I thought Márquez had done enough to win.

The official result was a majority decision for Pacquiao. Disagreeing with that verdict did not make bribery a fact, nor did it prove how Pacquiao would fare against a different opponent. At the time, disappointment made both leaps tempting.

That is one of the traps of waiting for a supposedly definitive fight. Every other performance becomes evidence in an argument about two men who are not yet sharing a ring. The opponent in front of us can almost disappear.

The cost of anticipation

Mayweather and Pacquiao finally met on 2 May 2015. The certainty I had felt in 2011 that the fight might never happen was wrong. The frustration behind it was real.

Looking back, what bothers me most is how much attention the wait consumed. Márquez had produced a performance worth discussing closely, yet the conversation hurried back to a future attraction.

Boxing has plenty to offer in the tense, particular contest taking place tonight. Sometimes the hardest thing for a fan is to let that be enough.