Will Pacquiao-Mayweather save boxing? Or does the sport need saving?

Manny Pacquiao and Floyd Mayweather Jr. pose for the media during the final press conference held at the KA Theatre in MGM Grand, Las Vegas Nevada on Wednesday, 29 April 2015. Photo by Rem Zamora/INQUIRER/ See more at FRAME

LAS VEGAS—There was a time in boxing’s history when fighters were treated like kings. Some of the champions of the golden years even flaunted their royalty in public when they were not making newspaper front pages with their brutal artistry.

Those days are gone.

Floyd Mayweather Jr. flaunts his wealth, but people are more turned off than they are awed by his show of extravagance.

Manny Pacquiao makes front pages with every ring victory, but mostly it’s in the Philippines, where he is a national everything to a nation badly in need of heroes.

Together, though, they could change boxing’s fate, even for a single night.

“It’s going to be the biggest fight in the world,” said trainer Freddie Roach, who will lead Pacquiao’s corner on Saturday, when the celebrated Filipino ring icon battles Mayweather at MGM Grand Garden Arena.

Boxing savior

For Top Rank chief and Pacquiao promoter Bob Arum, that is hogwash.

“Boxing doesn’t need saving,” said Arum. “Boxing is on a roll now. Boxing is very popular all around the world, in the Philippines, in the UK, in the United States. The ratings that HBO has been getting in fights, they’ve never seen before.”

READ: Arum: Pacquiao-Mayweather a culture clash

The perception that boxing is slowly losing is foothold in mainstream sports and pop culture comes from many factors. The heavyweight class, boxing’s marquee division, hasn’t had a certified crossover star since Mike Tyson chomped off Evander Holyfield’s ear. The rise of Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) also took the polish off the sport.

“There was a time when we lost in boxing the young Caucasian males in this country because they were more interested in UFC,” said Arum. “In UFC, they saw people that looked like themselves. In boxing, they didn’t. But this country is changing. In this country, the number of Mexican-Americans, Hispanic-Americans, Asian-Americans, African-Americans will soon be a majority. And so as there was a fall-off of young Caucasians, it’s been ameliorated by other ethnic groups that are growing with their fondness for the sport.”

Chance to reinvigorate itself

Veteran sportswriter Steve Carp, who beats deadlines for the Las Vegas Review-Journal, agrees to a certain extent.

“[Pacquiao-Mayweather] doesn’t save boxing,” said Carp. “What it does is it gives it a chance to reinvigorate itself.”

Carp added that the fight will play a huge role in pushing boxing back to the limelight.

“Manny has a point when he says that this fight is very important for the sport,” he said. “More than for Manny or for Floyd, this fight is going to be very important for boxing if it wants to put itself back in the spotlight again.”

And it will push fans to demand super fights, to demand that the best fighters square off instead of dancing around each other for five years, much as what happened with Pacquiao and Mayweather. But again, so much lies on both Pacquiao and Mayweather to deliver for the sport on Saturday night.

BACKSTORY: The road to the Pacquiao-Mayweather ‘Fight of the Century’

Harm the sport

“If this fight lives up to the hype, every boxing fan will demand that every super fight will be staged at this level,” said Nick Giongco, arguably the one of the finest boxing writers in the Philippines.

At a certain level, though, Pacquiao-Mayweather could harm the sport as much as it could do good for it.

“There is that chance that other fighters could be pushed out of the limelight,” Giongco said. “Last week, for example, [Wladmir] Klitschko fought [Bryant Jennings] and very few people seemed to care. And that’s the heavyweight division, supposedly the flagship of boxing.”

And then there is the fact that the sport is relying on two fighters closing in on the 12th round of their careers to give it a boost.

“Of course, it’s a matter of concern that these fighters are nearing the end of their careers,” said Arum. “But look at the fighters waiting in the wings. There’s Terrence Crawford, who is going to be tremendous. There’s [Vasyl] Lomachenko, who is on the [Pacquiao-Mayweather] card. There’s this Puerto Rican kid, Felix Verdejo.

“Look at the tremendous fighters coming out of countries from the old Soviet Union,” Arum added. “Look at Gennady Golovkin. He’s a tremendous fighter. [Sergey] Kovalev. He’s a tremendous fighter.”

“There will be pressure for these fighters to really step up to continue [the momentum],” added Giongco. “Fans have been spoiled by Pacquiao and Mayweather and if they live up to the hype, other fighters will have to step up.”

Carp doesn’t believe that the ages of the fighters being tasked to rescue boxing serve as an indictment of the sport. Pacquiao is 36 and Mayweather is 38.

“This fight was six years in the making,” he said. “If they had fought the first time this was ever brought up, Manny would have been 31 and Floyd 33 and they would have been at the peak of their careers.

“But the fact that they can fight at such a high level tells you more about how special these two guys are than it does tell anything about the sport,” added Carp.

The one thing that is sure, though, is that Pacquiao-Mayweather throws boxing back to those golden days when Marvin Hagler and Thomas Hearns gripped the world with eight minutes of ferocity, when Muhammad Ali pushed his greatness on the sport with a ferocity that stung like a bee and floated like a butterfly, when guys like Sugar Ray Robinson, Sugar Ray Leonard, Roberto Duran, and Mike Tyson were kings.
Return to royalty

Pacquiao-Mayweather returns the sport to royalty.

And that makes people wonder: Once Pacquiao-Mayweather rejuvenates the sport, where does boxing go when they are gone?

“Boxing was fine when Sugar Ray Robinson retired,” said Carp. Boxing was fine when Ali retired. Boxing was fine when Hagler, Hearns, Leonard and Duran retired. Boxing survived the retirement of [Evander] Holyfield, Tyson and [Lennox] Lewis. Boxing survived after [Julio Cesar] Chavez, [Oscar] De La Hoya and [Felix] Trinidad retired.

“Boxing will survive long after Pacquiao and Mayweather will retire,” he added.

But, like Giongco said, the two fighters who will trade mitts on Saturday night need to put on one hell of a show, not just for “fans who paid a lot to watch it” but also to keep pushing the sport’s momentum going.