BY JONESY

I watched the Manny and Floyd fight

I shelled out $50 to split the pay per view.

I did this as a man who is appalled by domestic violence and utterly committed to protecting and expanding reproductive rights for women and marriage rights for gay couples. I also watched the fight as someone who supports initiatives to protect athletes from concussion and who is genuinely disturbed by the later life trauma caused by head injuries as is now being exposed. I watched the fight as someone who detests monopolistic corporate behaviour and blatant price gauging.

There were a lot of reasons to not watch the fight. But I ponied up, and cheered for the evangelical Christian to beat the overpaid misogynist (preview of the Republican primaries anyone?).

I can’t offer any coherent socio-political narrative that sheds some otherwise unrevealed redeeming light on the fight.

Manny’s genuinely impoverished upbringing makes his story undeniable compelling – and his fame in the Philippines puts him in a league probably above even Tendulkar when it comes to the love and devotion by a single nation. However, soccer and basketball are littered with stories of talented youngsters rising out of poverty – take Serge Ibaka as one of the most incredible. Manny’s story is incredible, but it’s not unprecedented.

The most coherent explanation I could give to anyone who queried my determination to watch the fight was this – it had context and the very real potential to go down as one of the most memorable moments in sports history.

Boxing these days rarely conjures the kind of context the makes sporting events truly important. The build up to this fight and the background and record of the two fighters managed to do that. It managed to create the kind of importance that made you imagine the headlines and the mythologizing for each scenario.

If Manny had knocked Floyd out in the sixth round when he had a surge going, it would have been incredible. Mayweather’s undefeated record would have come crashing down and his boxing legacy (I use the term extremely narrowly) would have been tarnished by the crescendo of confirmed suspicions that he was an imposter as an undefeated champion.

Manny didn’t knock Floyd out.

Floyd won in what was the most predictable fashion. He was good enough to use his size advantage to control the fight and consistently out point Manny. It was clear from the outset that Manny’s only chance of winning was to risk coming within range of Floyd’s straight right in order to land power punches. Depending on how you see it, he either took the risk too often and got beat in the process, or didn’t risk it enough and left some big punches in the tank.

The end of the fight left me, like a lot of fans, feeling pretty empty.

I’d hoped for a miracle, for history, but instead got 12 rounds of sparring spiked with too much Justin Beiber. Given the size advantage Manny gave away, perhaps it was too much to think that he could consistently get within range through Mayweather’s lightening defense, in order to land a knock-out punch.

Perhaps it was too much to think that Mayweather, who is entirely comfortable announcing that he fights solely for his record and the money, would bring anything other than the most conservative fight plan to the night.

Perhaps ultimately though, it was too much to think that the fight would deliver an outcome that would be so memorable, so historically significant, that it would transcend every real and deplorable side story and sit as a singularly legitimate, self-justifying sporting moment.

That didn’t happen. Floyd remains undefeated and unrepentant.

And Manny will still be a demagogue opposed to rights for women and gays in his own country.

I’m not sure if I’m more disappointed in the fight for failing to deliver, or myself for still being unsure about whether the prospect of watching such transcendence was worth $50.