I was just reading another post and it reminded me of something. Floyd Mayweather fought Oscar De La Hoya in 2007 for Oscars Light Middleweight title, not because he wanted to conquer the higher weights, but because he wanted the biggest fight and biggest $$. That was always Oscars department. So, after leaving 140 he fought a shot Mitchell, Judah (coming off a loss), and Baldomir (who was in all fairness the chamion, albeit a perfect style matchup for Floyd) before getting that big fight that he had been seeking. As we all know, Mayweather defeated the Golden Boy while breaking ppv records as expected....One retirement and 3 years later.....well, Ill get back to that.... Just a month prior to the megafight that was Oscar-Floyd, Manny Pacquiao was defending his 130 title against Jorge Solis in San Antonio Texas. Paquiao was making some noise by having previously beaten Morales 2X, but Manny was far from mainstream and at the time. After rematching Barrera and Marquez (winning both- arguably one) and still at 130, he makes a move to 135 to fight David Diaz in an apparent attemt to conquer the lightweight division. At this point, he is gaining popularity and boxing fans are curious as to what he will do next. After beating Diaz it was assumed that he would fight one of the other Diaz's or give Marquez another shot.....until....Larry Merchant...yes Larry Merchant, came up with this brilliant idea of De La Hoya-Paquiao. Or at least thats who was said to have come up with the idea, but then again since when has anyone taken anything Larry's says as anything more than drunken ramblings? Again....Ill get back to that. In, May 2008 just one month before Paquiao-Diaz, and with no talk of a Oscar-Paquiao matchup (I mean that would be Crazy, right?), an aging Oscar coming off his loss to Floyd, fought another former Super-featherweight champion, Steve Forbes. It was a curious choice of opponent given the weight and size dispairity, but it was set to be at 150, Oscars lowest weight since 2001 in the Gatti fight. Why Forbes? Why is Oscar going down to 150? And on regular HBO? Ok, well its not ppv so I'll watch it. Oscar got the win in front thousands of his adoring fans in Califorinia. His ring years showed despite having won nearly every round....So, what happens now?...Well, Somebody has to say it! Someone has to come up with the idea!? And the public has to hear it!...how about...Larry Merchant!?..Ok. Yeah, Larry will do. Ok, I'll get to the point. As we all know Oscar-Pacquiao did indeed happen and it was at 147, a weight in which Paquiao had no interest in going up to. However, it was a huge fight for him and the money was there (Kinda like Floyd at Light-Middle, right?). As we all know, Manny was victorious and Oscar retired. Well, Oscar the athlete anyways. Moving on. September 2010, just two years later...we have MAYWEATHER-PAQUIAO! Oh, wait..no we dont. Not Yet. My point is that boxing fans are led to believe that one fight is somehow needed for boxing to move foward. We spend our hard earned dollars on these "mega-fights." We also become emotionally invested on a superficial level on the idea of the biggest fight in the world. But, how often do these fights live up to the expectation? Almost never. But they always meet or exceed in making the kind of millions of dollars they were set up to generate, as history has shown. So how did we get to Mayweather-Pacquiao? whatever that is. And do we need it? Like they say: Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice Shame on me.
Don't read more into it than it was. In fact, rewind a bit, you are forgetting a very important part. Oscar had already announced a return to 147 to rematch Floyd Mayweather Jr. That's why he fought Forbes, because of the style. It was a tune up match. However Floyd pulled out of the fight and Oscar was left hanging. He claimed to fight the winner of marg/cotto and was expecting Cotto to win when he didn't (drumroll please) that's when the topic of Pacquaio vs DLH came to attention. DLH vs Mayweather 2, the fight that never was. In other words, Oscar and the network weren't trying to make DLH/Pac they were trying to make Floyd/DLH 2 and were panicking when it fell through.
The only reason Oscar entertained the idea of fighting Pacquiao was due to Mayweather retiring and pulling out of their rematch. He needed a high profile opponent for late in the year and Pac was the most popular fighter after himself and also pound for pound #1. If Mayweather had stuck around we would never have seen that fishnet wearing freak get his ass kicked by the Filipino midget.
