The Sound and Fury of the Mayweather-Pacquiao Fight

On Saturday night, every single person in America (give or take) tuned in to watch the most boring boxing match of all time. It was a contest between Floyd Mayweather, the undefeated woman-beating champion whose in-ring conservatism turns boxing into a numbers game, and Manny Pacquiao, erstwhile cockfighting enthusiast and the most underdogginest underdog ever to throw a punch. More than that, it was in many ways mainstream America's reintroduction to boxing. It was an Event, the Fight of the Century, bigger than the Super Bowl crossed with the World Cup crossed with a presidential election held on the moon. Unless Muhammed Ali had parachuted down from the ceiling of the MGM Grand Garden Arena and started wailing on Mayweather in some sort of WWE-esque surprise appearance, there was no way it was going to live up to the hype.

In the end, Mayweather's boxing-as-a-round-of-golf strategy took the day, and while efficient, made for one of the most underwhelming events in the recent history of performative punching. In three weeks, following a few last flurries of follow-ups on follow-ups on follow-ups, the news cycle will right itself and boxing will return to the cultural footnote that it usually is.

The way to make people care about something they don't care about is to create a sense of mystery, a sense of urgency, an arch fear of missing out on something that feels like a cultural event. This is how we engaged in a national debate about the color of some goddamn dress, tuned into the Bruce Jenner interview, and why every four years suddenly decide we all care about soccer. With Mayweather-Pacquiao, we had plenty of narrative, which led to legions of armchair analysts spontaneously generating opinions about boxing, feeling about as natural as the growth of a third arm.

It's easy to understand why the fight was a big deal. You'd be hard-pressed to find two fighters more diametrically opposed than Mayweather and Pacquiao. The former is an asshole outside of the ring and a chess grandmaster inside of it. He preens and flashes like an alternate-universe 50 Cent who takes the same clinical, only-take-the-safe-route strategy in picking opponents to maintain his undefeated record that 50 does when he's manufacturing hits. Pacquiao, meanwhile, might as well be a saint. He's humble, completely without guile, his out-of-ring exploits (politics, pro basketball, making bad music) seen as charming quirks rather than the side-effects of an overblown ego. He fights relentlessly, like a guy who became homeless at 14 because his dad ate his dog, which is a thing that reportedly happened. They are boxing's yin and yang, and on Saturday, we were told, they were finally going to come together in a mushroom cloud of pugilistic hype.

And so, a narrative cohered. The Devil vs. the Angel. The Guy Who Hangs Out with Justin Bieber vs. The Guy Who Is Bigger Than Justin Bieber in His Home Country. As a society, we like this stuff. It unites us, gives us some fodder for conversation with our coworkers while we awkwardly count the hours until we can not be around them. We like having a common goal, such as "getting out of paying $100 to watch this boxing match the world has decided everyone must watch or else the oceans will boil."

This is how I found myself, on Saturday afternoon, calling a Buffalo Wild Wings in Hollywood, asking if they'd be showing the fight. "Buffalo Wild Wings, how may I wow you today," an unenthusiastic Wild Wingsman answered the phone. "Oh. No, we won't be showing the fight, but Dave & Buster's down the street will." A quick call to my friendly local D&B confirmed that this was, in fact, true.

Now, there is no way to enjoy Dave & Buster's "ironically," even if you bargain with yourself by saying it's the most American place you can watch two men beat the shit out of each other, or saying it's a giving in to our basest desires for arcade games and mayhem. Much like Keeping up with the Kardashians or methamphetamine, Dave & Buster's transcends lines of economics, class, intellect, sophistication, or lifestyle. You either like it or you don't, and it doesn't matter why. Whether you're doing it as a joke or not, you're still playing the same skeeball machines as the next asshole.

No matter how much I tried to psych myself up for D&B's, the line for the place was around the block when I got there. Even desperate men have their limits.

Salvation came, as it often does, in the form of a branded activation. A friend texted me that he'd been invited to a swanky party at a house a hip mattress company used as its headquarters (yeah, this is a thing), and that my girlfriend and I would be able to get in.

The party, held in the Hollywood Hills overlooking the expanses of Los Angeles, was one of those places where the real world and Entourage blurred into each other. An open bar, a free valet service, an extremely tall and extremely terrifying Celebrity Guest UFC Legend Chuck Liddell taking pictures with people, a DJ set by Celebrity DJ Balthazar Getty, whose name I had to google to confirm he is indeed famous. These are things that are only sustainable in LA, where people delude themselves into thinking things like this are fun because they have deluded themselves into thinking they are important enough to hang out there.

The energy of a room full of people watching a fight of any sort is insane. There were about a hundred of us in the living room watching two men in their mid-to-late 30s beat on other around a ring. No matter how much people might suppress it in their daily lives, it's times like this when the bloodlust comes out. People are screaming for one human to destroy another, and when their human starts getting destroyed himself, shit can turn ugly. As it became clear that Pacquaio—the party crowd's favorite, judging by the screams of support and the jeers for Mayweather—would lose the fight without a knockout, tensions ran high. Aggressions projected towards the TV became focused elsewhere, and the humanity of the party regressed a bit. Little arguments broke out by the bathroom. A woman angrily berated me for being too tall and blocking her view. By the time people were trollishly yelling, "Money Team!" in favor of Mayweather, I was worried about the possibility of the post-fight dance party turning into a post-fight fight.

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Not that we stuck around for much longer. Making our way back to the valet, my girlfriend and I chatted with security about the surrealism of keeping the peace in a room full of normal people who had transformed into maniacs. The security guards didn't seem to be having a good time, but one of them excitedly told us there had been a bunch of porn stars in attendance.

As we waited for our car, we watched other partygoers disperse. One group, consisting of beautiful rich kids waiting for their large black SUV, caught my eye. One of them, wearing jorts and a large, button-up designer shirt with the casual disdain that one is afforded by a life of privilege, had swiped a bottle of wine from the place and broke off from his friends to wander in circles, yelling to no one in particular. Two others secreted themselves against the neighbor's house and had begun making out. Such is the energy of watching people beat each other up on TV. It makes us primal, reduces us to our basest instincts. This was the true outcome of the fight of the century; what happened inside the ring was just spectacle.

Follow Drew Millard on Twitter.