Sports Column: A Preening Champion, Glorified and Reviled

Sometimes Darth Vader wins.

His spinning, evasive, technically proficient defense of his title accomplished, Floyd Mayweather Jr. jumped atop the ropes in his ring in his arena in his town and preened. He crossed his arms in that aren't-I-the-baddest fashion and stared cold-eyed at the crowd in MGM Grand Garden Arena.

The fans rewarded him with cascading waves of boos.

To stand and peer around the darkened arena in Mayweather's moment of triumph was to see a striking sight: Most of those booing appeared to be not Filipino fans of the beaten Manny Pacquiao but Americans, white and black.

There is no moral narrative to be found in the result of a boxing match. Whoever punches harder, dodges quicker, takes a punch, clears his head and plots strategy wins. On Saturday night, that was Mayweather, who is a cunning and resourceful champion. (Floyd Mayweather's Triumph Over Manny Pacquiao: Key Moments)

We stand at this curious hinge point in our culture, however, as fans try to square artistry in a ring - or on a baseball field or a basketball court - with an athlete's behavior in his private life, toward his wife, his girlfriend or his children. Mayweather's malefactions, his beating of girlfriends and snarling intimidation of his children, are well known, beyond dispute and scabrous. He has pleaded guilty several times and even served a short jail stint, a fact he now tries to skip over in interviews.

Our moral accountings on such questions are stumbling and nonlinear. Running back Ray Rice knocked out his fiancee, who is now his wife, with a punch in an elevator, and fans somehow rationalized cheering for him weeks later. (Mayweather Stays Perfect With Decision Over Pacquiao)

Later in the same NFL season, when Adrian Peterson, the league's greatest running back, was found to have beaten his son with a switch, many Minnesota Vikings fans demanded his benching. So fans maneuver the line between when to show love and when to retch.

This cognitive dissonance was on display in MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas over the past week. Many fans purchased mounds of Mayweather swag, the black "Money" hats, the "Pretty Boy" T-shirts. (Mayweather, ever the terrifically wealthy pragmatist, thanked his watch company after the fight.)

But at the event, cheers for Pacquiao, a hyperkinetic and ebullient boxer, gave a straight-out-of-Manila feel to the match. (Pacquiao Believes He Beat Mayweather)

The fight was flogged in pure P.T. Barnum style by Showtime, HBO, Mayweather Promotions and Tecate beer. It was the Fight of the Century, the Super Bowl, the Kentucky Derby and Emperor Nero setting a few famished lions on naughty Christians, all at the same time. (Floyd Mayweather's Triumph Over Manny Pacquiao: Key Moments)

As if.

Several heads along press row more knowledgeable than mine on boxing noted that this match as it turned out was - perhaps - the Fight of the Last Month. That admittedly makes for a challenging marketing campaign.

It was the strategic fight of two old men. The athletic dotage of Pacquiao, 36, and Mayweather, 38, is well advanced.

In service of a vast $300 million purse, and in a final lunge at history, the two men fought a fight talked of for half a decade. Pacquiao came out in his banana yellow trunks, and Mayweather in his gold and black. They spent the first rounds twitching and jumping, as if on a griddle. They darted in to jab and jumped back, their eyes feral wide.

Mayweather won a couple of rounds on points. Then Pacquiao began to press his case, stutter-stepping, tossing tight combinations, pressing the taller Mayweather back against the ropes. Between rounds, Mayweather slumped on his chair, staring as his trainer and father, Floyd Sr., a former professional boxer, smacked his chest and berated his son for failing to attack.

This Mayweather eventually did. He covered up, and spun and dipped, and stalked his prey carefully. He is taller and longer than Pacquiao, and he used that to his advantage, jabbing, jabbing, and sometimes grabbing and weighing down Pacquiao.

In Pacquiao's corner between rounds, the respected late-middle-aged trainer Freddie Roach implored his fighter to move sideways, to slash and hit. The Filipino interpreter, too, spoke into Pacquiao's ear. (Roach confessed last week that he sometimes worried that the interpreter was a runaway train; Roach will speak eight words in English to Pacquiao, and the translator will offer 25 in Tagalog.)

By the last rounds, Pacquiao was flagging, his short bap-bap-bap jabs and uppercuts departed, replaced by looping and wild punches. Such haymakers make a bonfire of a fighter's energy.

The 12th and final round wore down, two minutes, one minute, 30 seconds. Pacquiao grew more frantic, chasing Mayweather, his agitation a sure marker of his desperation.

The bell sounded, and Pacquiao threw up his arms as if to claim victory, but the roar that greeted his gesture felt forced.

"If he had stood still, I could have thrown more punches," a frustrated Pacquiao said afterward.

It would be a foolish boxer who complied with his opponent's desire for a stationary target.

The ring announcer stood up with his cat-that-ate-the-canary smile and waited for silence before announcing that the three judges had given Mayweather a unanimous decision. The champion was now 48-0.

Then the preening began, Mayweather beating on his chest, leaning toward the audience and leering. Some of this is practiced; he long ago intuited that his killah's mystique was easily turned into a lucrative bankroll.

And he was correct when he told an interviewer afterward that he had simply outboxed Pacquiao, slowly, carefully wearing him down.

His acknowledged artistry drew few claps, however. And the booing that greeted him, the howling and thumbs down, could not have made the boxer's many sponsors happy. He has served (very brief) jail time for beating the mother of three of his children on the back of her head, and a more recent girlfriend filed a lawsuit accusing him of beating and abusing her, too.

"My last fight is in September," Mayweather said.

That is just as well. Our culture, thankfully, is a swift-flowing river, and this champion boxer and abuser is in danger of getting swept over its rapids.

© 2015 New York Times News Service