Beyond hype: Title fights that shook the world

The category: Big Bucks.

The answer: Saturday’s welterweight championship between Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Manny Pacquiao.

The question: What’s the biggest money-making fight in boxing history?

And good for them. Nothing wrong with becoming boxing’s all-time Big Bucks champions. Nothing wrong with Mayweather and Pacquiao dividing the seemingly fantastical sum of $300 million, a figure the New York Times recently reported.

It’s just that we might wonder whether this fight will leave a mark beyond its financial wallop. We might wonder:

Will it have any significance in purely boxing terms?

Will it rank among the handful of prizefights that transcends a sport often on the ropes but never knocked out and be remembered for its historic or social impact?

The answers: Maybe; no way.

Mayweather-Pacquiao will have in-the-ring boxing significance if it’s a dramatically competitive bout between highly skilled fighters at the peak of their powers. That’s possible, but problematic. Mayweather is 38 and Pacquiao 36, and this fight, for which the boxing public has ached for years, has been cynically delayed so long for the sole purpose of squeezing every last potential penny out of it that, hype aside, it could turn out to be anti-climactic. Granted, Mayweather is the master boxer, Pacquiao the terrific puncher, and disparate styles often make the best fights. We’ll see.

But there have been only a few fights with truly significant social impact beyond the ring, and Mayweather-Pacquiao isn’t in that class. Those fights are:

Jack Johnson vs. Jim Jeffries

Johnson became the first black man to become heavyweight champion when he defeated Tommy Byrnes in Sydney, Australia in 1908. For the next year and a half, the rabidly racist sporting press in the United States vigorously sought a so-called Great White Hope to dethrone Johnson, whose skill, ego and dissolute lifestyle, along with his skin color, of course, irritated the powers that be to no end. In Jeffries, he was facing a hugely popular former champion who was undefeated but who was 35 and had been retired for six years.

At Reno on July 4, 1910, Johnson knocked out Jeffries in the 15th round of a scheduled 45-round bout. In the aftermath, race riots in several U.S. cities left 12 dead.

Johnson would be hounded by authorities and the press for years, essentially for having sexual relations with white women. In 1915, at 37, he was knocked out by Jess Willard in the 26th round in Havana. A century later, Johnson is still regarded as one of the greatest boxing champions and an uncompromising (although some would say uncaring) symbol of African American pride.

Joe Louis vs. Max Schmeling

In 1938, Louis was 12 months into his 11-year reign as the first black heavyweight champion since Johnson. Two years earlier, he had been knocked unconscious by the ex-champ from Germany.

The run-up to the rematch at Yankee Stadium signaled that the bout was bigger, much bigger, than boxing. As the tensions of a seemingly inevitable world war increased, anticipation for the fight took on the heft of international symbolism: Louis, defender of democracy, vs. Schmeling, fighter for fascism.

Louis’ first-round destruction of Schmeling, heard by millions via radio, racially united a patriotic nation (if only in theory) and instantly entered into legend, where it remains firmly ensconced.

Muhammad Ali vs. Joe Frazier

Their 1971 heavyweight title fight was a rarity: It lived up to its enormous hype.

Ali, the unbeaten ex-champion with his “float like a butterfly, sting like a bee” boxing style, self-promoting personality and definitively with his conscientious objection to the Vietnam War, had divided the generations. Less than five months earlier, he had returned to the ring after a 42-month ban for refusing induction into the Army.

Frazier, the new unbeaten champ, was a no-nonsense brawler, a throwback. And although Ali was knocked down in the 15th round and lost a unanimous decision, he removed all doubt that he was indeed a great fighter, and he went on for another decade, burnishing his legend and earning worldwide acclaim. Frazier, although the winner, was never again the same indestructible force.

So, yeah, Mayweather-Pacquiao will make fistfuls of record-setting dollars. But their fight certainly won’t be transcendent as a racial, political or cultural benchmark.

For rousing fisticuffs, will it compare to, say, the first Leonard-Duran? Or Hagler-Hearns? Gotti-Ward? Will it be a classic? We can only hope.

But it might have trouble simply being a decent boxing match.