The big week is finally here. For the first time in five years, regular people will care about boxing for a day or two. They may even stop by this site. To ensure no visiting literary critics go away dissatisfied, then, we’ll begin with a quote attributed to an Oscar not named De la Hoya.
“All bad poetry is sincere,” said Oscar Wilde.
This Saturday, a more famous Oscar will make a much-anticipated fight with Floyd Mayweather. As Floyd Mayweather is the reigning pound-for-pound king of bad prose, and since questions of sincerity have played a part in promoting “The World Awaits,” how sincerity contributes to bad art is worth considering.
But before we set to pondering this, perhaps we should burn a sacrifice to the boxing gods – that our prayers for a great main event be heard. Estimates indicate that no match since Lennox Lewis fought Mike Tyson in 2002 has been this important to the world.
Let’s not get greedy, though, and ask the boxing gods for anything but a great main event. A great all-round card is pretty much out of the question. To ensure no good boxing is wasted on Saturday’s late-arriving crowd, Golden Boy Promotions has put together an undercard that cannot salvage the main event anyway.
So, here’s a main-event dream scenario. Late in Round 1, Oscar de la Hoya drops Floyd Mayweather. Dazed and outgunned, Floyd Mayweather then finds the wherewithal to survive the first half of the fight. And in the last six rounds, Floyd proves he’s as great as he says he is and outclasses a five-division world champion and Olympic gold medalist, stopping Oscar in the 12th round.
Oh, there’s the alarm; enough dreaming. Here’s what will probably happen. After five months of scowling and threats, Floyd Mayweather endangers himself just enough to win each round by a small margin. Oscar de la Hoya, meanwhile, tastes right uppercuts enough in the first three rounds that he turns “The World Awaits” into a jabbing contest. And the most suspenseful moment of the night comes with the reading of the judges’ scorecards.
In order for this Saturday’s fight to be good, much less great, one of two things has to happen. Either Floyd Mayweather has to be considerably less than we believe he is. Or Oscar de la Hoya has to be much more. There’s a small chance Floyd’s not that good. There’s no chance Oscar’s that much better.
Come Sunday morning, though, let no boxing aficionado be cowed by blockbuster pay-per-view figures. How many people consume “The World Awaits” will speak mostly to HBO’s ability as a promoter. How many part-time sports fans become converts to boxing – prowling Telefutura for the next Oscar de la Hoya or staying up till midnight to watch ShoBox unearth another Floyd Mayweather – is what will determine whether this Saturday’s spectacle has enriched our sport, or merely two of its millionaires.
Now back to Oscar Wilde. In his idea about bad poetry and its unfailing sincerity, Mr. Wilde quipped that when we are most sincere, we are least artistic. Would-be artists decide they already speak with the Bard’s own tongue and that all they need for a great comment on the human condition is a tape recorder – or a blog.
But once artistic distance, a form of insincerity, goes away, most art becomes little more than a witty shouting contest. “Keepin’ it real” is the latest incarnation of this and something at which Floyd Mayweather fancies himself a champ.
It its well-made series of infomercials, “De la Hoya-Mayweather 24/7,” HBO has treated the Mayweather clan most fairly when its narrator tells the family’s story. The rest of the time, whether its Floyd’s explanation that he doesn’t look behind because he’s on top or Roger Mayweather’s incoherent O.J. Simpson analogy, the more reality the Mayweathers show us, the less art we see.
What is real, then, is not very entertaining. The supermarket is real, the rush-hour commute is real, and so is a drunken neighbor berating his son. But would anyone pay $54.95 to see these events?
Prizefighting, most especially its promotion, is about entertainment. Entertainment, whatever the medium, is an art form. Don King knows this, Bob Arum knows this, and Oscar de la Hoya has a light grip on it. How much of an entertainer Oscar has been in the leadup of “The World Awaits” is debatable. But at least De la Hoya has remained in character. That is, at least Oscar has “kept it” somewhat unreal.
Oscar de la Hoya’s life may not be our sport’s most colorful – though some of its color is no doubt concealed. And Oscar’s not the most endearing good guy. But Floyd Mayweather has made a lousy bad guy because he tends to break script and be unpredictable mostly to himself.
Here’s what the villain had to say to reporters last week: “For all the kids that’s in the inner city, that’s in the urban community, they can’t afford hat and gloves for school. We provide hat and gloves for the kids. We help the battered women and the battered children.”
Not exactly the stuff of Clubber Lang.
But putting aside Floyd’s erroneous belief that there has to be a bad guy for this fight to sell – who was the bad guy when De la Hoya fought Trinidad? – the trouble is that Floyd’s not a bad guy at all. Out of the ring, Floyd’s neither a bad guy nor an artist. And while his efforts to be both these things have been sincere, finally, as Oscar Wilde warned us, they’ve made for bad poetry.
The good news is that this promotion is just about through. In less than a week, Floyd Mayweather, the artist, will enter the prizefighting ring – his true medium. What he does in there will have lasting consequences for the sport of boxing. So, Floyd, it’s time to stop being sincere and show us some genius.
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