I really thought I wanted to see the fight this weekend. I expected to join millions of other sports fans in plunking down $100 to my cable provider to watch Floyd Mayweather and Manny Pacquiao pummel each other in what is being hyped as one of the great boxing matches in history.
And then I couldn’t pull the trigger.
It’s not the money. I don’t think I’d watch the fight even if it were free. Something has changed. In boxing. In the world. Maybe in me.
Boxing doesn’t enjoy the popularity it once did. There have been widespread calls for its abolition -- especially by the neurologists who see its effects. But I’m old enough to remember when boxing was the king of sports, when the greatest intellectuals of the age were drawn to it.
