By David P. Greisman
Gorgeous George, meet Pretty Boy Floyd.
Floyd Mayweather Jr. is far from the only boxer to mix it up in the professional wrestling world. Some combinations of Sweet Science and sports entertainment have been works – Chuck Wepner and Andre the Giant, Evander Holyfield and Matt Hardy; others, quite real: Muhammad Ali long felt the damage from leg kicks suffered over 15 rounds with Antonio Inoki, and a less acclaimed heavyweight, Butterbean, knocked Bart Gunn unconscious in 35 seconds.
Butterbean-Gunn came at WrestleMania 15. Nine years later, the biggest event in the business, which airs Sunday at 7 p.m. Eastern Time, will play host to scripted fare featuring Mayweather and The Big Show.
Mayweather has captured titles in five divisions. He sits atop pound-for-pound lists. He’s grown from an acclaimed amateur into a prominent professional. With a father and uncles who were also in the sport, one would think that boxing has always been his everything. Not so.
“One of my ultimate goals was to be a wrestler when I was a kid,” Mayweather said last week. “When you watch WWE as a kid, you like, ‘Man, that’s unreal, unbelievable.’ ”
As if to prove his fan-hood, Mayweather rattles off a list of favorites – headliners and mid-carders from the days when World Wrestling Entertainment was the World Wrestling Federation: Greg “The Hammer” Valentine, “Mr. Wonderful” Paul Orndorff, Jake “The Snake” Roberts, Hulk Hogan, the British Bulldogs, the Hart Foundation, King Kong Bundy, Junkyard Dog, Tito Santana, Jimmy “Superfly” Snuka, the Iron Sheik and Nikolai Volkoff. Characters, larger than life, imprinted on a young boy’s mind.
“When you’re a kid, you say, ‘I’m gonna wrestle like this someday when I become an adult,’ ” Mayweather said. “One thing led to another, and somehow I ended up at WrestleMania.”
Pound-for-pound, meet 441 pounds.
That ‘one thing’ was Mayweather being brought in for an angle with the returning Big Show at last month’s No Way Out pay-per-view. That night, Mayweather jumped the ringside barricade to come to the defense of fallen wrestler Rey Mysterio Jr. The Big Show shoved Mayweather away and taunted him. With a 7-foot-tall target in front of him, Mayweather responded.
“I punched a guy in the face. I broke his nose. No blood capsules or anything,” Mayweather said. And it’s true. The Big Show apparently turned in the wrong direction and took a left hook. It was realer than it needed to be. It made the moment better.
Since then, the build for the match leading up to WrestleMania has seen highs and lows. With a week to go, the exact stipulations for the bout had yet to be revealed. Odds are that boxing will be involved – Mayweather isn’t exactly trained to wrestle, though he’s probably been taught the basics of taking bumps in the ring. And The Big Show pinned opponent Chris Jericho last week after landing a single right hand.
The Big Show has largely been pushed as a bad guy. Typically that would make Mayweather the babyface, but the lines aren’t so clear. Mayweather not only got booed in California – Oscar De La Hoya territory, and despite this extracurricular activity, there is the little matter of a September rematch with the Golden Boy – but elsewhere, too. He is brash, and as has been evident in the build-ups to his showdowns with De La Hoya, Arturo Gatti and Ricky Hatton, Mayweather is far more comfortable when wearing the proverbial black hat.
So is Mayweather the next-generation heel? Has the Million Dollar Man made way for the $20 million man?
Not exactly.
In an event synonymous with the company that holds it, all of the top wrestlers are involved so as to get a cut of the sizable gate and lucrative pay-per-view revenue. Although Mr. McMahon the character might put out $20 million for a non-wrestler to make an appearance, Vince McMahon the businessman knows better.
Still, Mayweather will pull in enough to satisfy his new “Money” moniker.
“When it’s all said and done, I’m a businessman,” Mayweather said. “What I’m showing every other fighter that’s out there, I’m showing them versatility. Don’t just be one-dimensional. Go outside the box. When you look at any other fighter in boxing, you say, ‘He’s a boxer.’ But when you look at Floyd Mayweather, you say, ‘That kid’s an entertainer.’ ”
This, then, is a match made in heaven.
“WWE is the biggest entertainment company. It has the biggest vehicle in promotion in the world,” Mayweather said. “I’m one of the flashiest, flamboyant, most exciting entertainers out there right now. I’m one of the hottest products, and I can be sold. My credentials speak for itself [sic]. Whatever I got involved with, I don’t slack at it. I give it my best. WrestleMania, I’m going to be at my best. ‘Dancing with the Stars,’ hey, I was at my best.”
Forget for a moment that Mayweather was bounced from the reality dancing competition after four weeks. The brief stint still put his face in front of one of the largest television audiences out there. That didn’t necessarily translate into record-setting sales for Mayweather’s pay-per-view fight with Hatton, though hundreds of thousands in the States still tuned in. Nevertheless, the boxer whose talent was once inversely proportional to his popularity is now a legitimate superstar.
How much of a crossover will there be? Will boxing fans, taxed by a regular offering of $50 shows, dig into their wallets once more for something that, despite all the intrigue, is still a scripted spectacle?
After raking in eight figures for the two biggest main events of 2007, Mayweather, of course, is hyping the chance for people to watch a welterweight take on one of the heaviest of heavyweights.
“If everybody wants to see how it gets done,” he said, “buy a pay-per-view.”
