Tweet
Excerpt by Bart Barry~CBS
Among the more misunderstood quotes from Hamlet is this one: "The lady doth protest too much, methinks."
The word "protest" meant something more to Shakespeare. When Hamlet's mother used "protest" to critique an actress playing the role of Hamlet's mother, she intended "declare" more than "oppose." Where is this headed?
Boxing's previous king, like Hamlet's queenly mother, tended to protest too much his own greatness. Along with his uncle, he hectored a lot of decent folks into celebrating him as more than he was. He also hectored brighter stars into inau****ious showdowns that grew his celebrity.
But celebrity is ephemeral, we mustn't forget, and posterity is always the harsher critic.
In many ways our former king's celebrity stands in bare contrast to the obscurity of our current co-king, Juan Manuel Marquez -- who shares his crown with Manny Pacquiao. What does Marquez have to do with Floyd "Money May" Mayweather? Nothing, until two Saturdays ago.
Top fighter Juan Manuel Marquez has an impressive 50-4-1 record with 37 KOs.
That was when Marquez called for a showdown with our sport's former pound-for-pound fixture. The fight probably won't happen because only one of the participants understands that a reward, in the risk-to-reward sense, can comprise anything more than dollars. And the other participant is retired.
But before we go any further, let's be clear. I am not calling Money May out of retirement. Boxing is a happier, better place without him. Since Marquez spoke his name, though, and since there might be something instructive about a comparison, we can treat one as the symbol of a bygone time and the other as a model of permanence.
Mayweather craved celebrity. This compulsion took him to places silly as dance contests and WrestleMania. Under the guise of making money, Mayweather said and did everything he could to become famous. He succeeded, too. His career earnings relatively dwarfed their achievements.
And no, earnings are not the same as achievements.
Juan Manuel Marquez's comparative poverty proves this. Laboring in obscurity -- a traditional refuge of the craftsman -- Marquez has fought just as many world title fights as Mayweather. He has also fought 35 percent more career matches than Mayweather. Yet, Marquez is barely a household name in his home country of Mexico. And in the United States he's just one more little boxer with a name that ends in "Z."
But there's a good chance posterity will reward Marquez's obscurity. When his battles with Pacquiao are revisited, when the courage he showed against Juan Diaz is reviewed -- and when these events are married to his overall body of work -- there's almost no doubt he'll be regarded as an all-time great, despite his losses.
The undefeated Money May? Not so much.
Mayweather was the product of a supply-begets-demand phenomenon. Back when we had a free market, there was an incompletely understood explanation for how demand can occur. It said the existence of a product -- especially in a society that substitutes con****uous consumption for identity -- causes demand for the product. Folks going to the mall to see what they want to buy, in other words.
In Mayweather's case, the product was celebrity. Time for celebrity was in great supply. Perpetual motion machines like cable news and gossip websites ensured a demand for new celebrities. New celebrities were found. The demand was artificial, and again, ephemeral, but for a generation of folks raised to believe celebrity equaled validation, that never mattered.
A wise man once said fame without achievement is a miserable thing while achievement without fame is a pretty good life. Apparently too few people were listening.
Mayweather has had fame and achievement, just not in justifiable proportion. Marquez has had achievement without fame -- in an inverse ratio otherwise similar to Mayweather's.
Marquez now seeks to remedy this. When he says he wants to fight the best and experts say Mayweather is the best, we ought to take him at his word. He wants more money too, of course, but Marquez's history shows us that "best" must not always mean "most lucrative."
Mayweather's naked cupidity, in contrast, also has its refreshing aspects. Not for a moment did Money May pretend Zab Judah, Carlos Baldomir, Oscar De La Hoya or Ricky Hatton were the best. They were just opponents whose risk-to-reward ratios were optimal. Good for him.
But the world is upside-down now. The last five months have destroyed so much wealth that one's net worth is no longer much of a metric for achievement. Serious people were never lazy enough to see bank accounts as achievement scoreboards, anyway, but in the last 30 years serious people had trouble getting heard over the din.
The great re-valuation has yet to come to boxing. But with what the market has lately done to the price of Los Angeles commercial real estate and yachts, you have to assume boxing's wealthiest figures will not be spared. Those who saw the word "prizefighting" as five parts "prize" for every one part "fighting" aren't going to enjoy the stress test posterity subjects their legacies to.
The system is now in self-cannibalization mode. That's not a political commentary. It's much larger than which jersey -- blue or red -- your favorite team wears. For decades we mistook custodians for innovators, mechanics for engineers and managers for entrepreneurs. We halfheartedly cheered operators who made miniscule process changes and called themselves revolutionaries. In boxing, too.
As Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen put it so astutely last week, "History, like an animal escaped from the zoo, is again out of its cage." History now happens to us. Whether or not boxing should be spared is irrelevant. It won't be. Even if we all took an oath not to challenge the legacies of past heroes, it would happen anyway. And figures like Marquez would grow in stature as figures like Mayweather shrank.
So, back to Shakespeare. There's a good way to keep track of this re-evaluation at home. Listen for the irony. Those that doth protest too much their greatness, methinks, will be those whose legacies are razed.
Among the more misunderstood quotes from Hamlet is this one: "The lady doth protest too much, methinks."
The word "protest" meant something more to Shakespeare. When Hamlet's mother used "protest" to critique an actress playing the role of Hamlet's mother, she intended "declare" more than "oppose." Where is this headed?
Boxing's previous king, like Hamlet's queenly mother, tended to protest too much his own greatness. Along with his uncle, he hectored a lot of decent folks into celebrating him as more than he was. He also hectored brighter stars into inau****ious showdowns that grew his celebrity.
But celebrity is ephemeral, we mustn't forget, and posterity is always the harsher critic.
In many ways our former king's celebrity stands in bare contrast to the obscurity of our current co-king, Juan Manuel Marquez -- who shares his crown with Manny Pacquiao. What does Marquez have to do with Floyd "Money May" Mayweather? Nothing, until two Saturdays ago.
Top fighter Juan Manuel Marquez has an impressive 50-4-1 record with 37 KOs.
That was when Marquez called for a showdown with our sport's former pound-for-pound fixture. The fight probably won't happen because only one of the participants understands that a reward, in the risk-to-reward sense, can comprise anything more than dollars. And the other participant is retired.
But before we go any further, let's be clear. I am not calling Money May out of retirement. Boxing is a happier, better place without him. Since Marquez spoke his name, though, and since there might be something instructive about a comparison, we can treat one as the symbol of a bygone time and the other as a model of permanence.
Mayweather craved celebrity. This compulsion took him to places silly as dance contests and WrestleMania. Under the guise of making money, Mayweather said and did everything he could to become famous. He succeeded, too. His career earnings relatively dwarfed their achievements.
And no, earnings are not the same as achievements.
Juan Manuel Marquez's comparative poverty proves this. Laboring in obscurity -- a traditional refuge of the craftsman -- Marquez has fought just as many world title fights as Mayweather. He has also fought 35 percent more career matches than Mayweather. Yet, Marquez is barely a household name in his home country of Mexico. And in the United States he's just one more little boxer with a name that ends in "Z."
But there's a good chance posterity will reward Marquez's obscurity. When his battles with Pacquiao are revisited, when the courage he showed against Juan Diaz is reviewed -- and when these events are married to his overall body of work -- there's almost no doubt he'll be regarded as an all-time great, despite his losses.
The undefeated Money May? Not so much.
Mayweather was the product of a supply-begets-demand phenomenon. Back when we had a free market, there was an incompletely understood explanation for how demand can occur. It said the existence of a product -- especially in a society that substitutes con****uous consumption for identity -- causes demand for the product. Folks going to the mall to see what they want to buy, in other words.
In Mayweather's case, the product was celebrity. Time for celebrity was in great supply. Perpetual motion machines like cable news and gossip websites ensured a demand for new celebrities. New celebrities were found. The demand was artificial, and again, ephemeral, but for a generation of folks raised to believe celebrity equaled validation, that never mattered.
A wise man once said fame without achievement is a miserable thing while achievement without fame is a pretty good life. Apparently too few people were listening.
Mayweather has had fame and achievement, just not in justifiable proportion. Marquez has had achievement without fame -- in an inverse ratio otherwise similar to Mayweather's.
Marquez now seeks to remedy this. When he says he wants to fight the best and experts say Mayweather is the best, we ought to take him at his word. He wants more money too, of course, but Marquez's history shows us that "best" must not always mean "most lucrative."
Mayweather's naked cupidity, in contrast, also has its refreshing aspects. Not for a moment did Money May pretend Zab Judah, Carlos Baldomir, Oscar De La Hoya or Ricky Hatton were the best. They were just opponents whose risk-to-reward ratios were optimal. Good for him.
But the world is upside-down now. The last five months have destroyed so much wealth that one's net worth is no longer much of a metric for achievement. Serious people were never lazy enough to see bank accounts as achievement scoreboards, anyway, but in the last 30 years serious people had trouble getting heard over the din.
The great re-valuation has yet to come to boxing. But with what the market has lately done to the price of Los Angeles commercial real estate and yachts, you have to assume boxing's wealthiest figures will not be spared. Those who saw the word "prizefighting" as five parts "prize" for every one part "fighting" aren't going to enjoy the stress test posterity subjects their legacies to.
The system is now in self-cannibalization mode. That's not a political commentary. It's much larger than which jersey -- blue or red -- your favorite team wears. For decades we mistook custodians for innovators, mechanics for engineers and managers for entrepreneurs. We halfheartedly cheered operators who made miniscule process changes and called themselves revolutionaries. In boxing, too.
As Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen put it so astutely last week, "History, like an animal escaped from the zoo, is again out of its cage." History now happens to us. Whether or not boxing should be spared is irrelevant. It won't be. Even if we all took an oath not to challenge the legacies of past heroes, it would happen anyway. And figures like Marquez would grow in stature as figures like Mayweather shrank.
So, back to Shakespeare. There's a good way to keep track of this re-evaluation at home. Listen for the irony. Those that doth protest too much their greatness, methinks, will be those whose legacies are razed.