Above a Texas bullring, a reminder about Floyd Mayweather

SAN ANTONIO – Suspended above a bullring on a wire-mesh floor below a cinema-size screen, one story and 50 yards from where Cowboys Dancehall’s dancers danced, 75 or so aficionados gathered to look up to a gigantic image of Floyd Mayweather looping right crosses off Miguel Cotto’s left temple. They had arrived round 6:00 PM and sat through seven local-talent fights co-promoted by Jesse James Leija, and a pay-per-view co-main as well.

Although their view was front row of a movie theater that made customers stand, these aficionados enjoyed certain uncommon benefits: they were in a lively if respectful group comprising more serious observers than the folks downstairs keeping one eye on the Spurs game, there was instead of HBO’s audio feed the odd musical assortment that explodes from cowboy-bar speakers – Sir Mix-A-Lot opening for Garth Brooks – and there was the unexpectedly good event that went off above them.

Floyd Mayweather decisioned Miguel Cotto by unanimous scores, Saturday, in MGM Grand. The scorecards, while wide, were about what prognosticators expected, when in a reflection of bookmakers’ opinions, they favored Mayweather nine or so to one – with the one in that ratio usually having an ethnic or financial stake in picking the loser. Writers at ringside had the fight closer than the official judges, and ringside writers and official judges composed the matter’s sole authorities.

Nobody sincerely believed Cotto would win Saturday’s fight, and he did not. But Cotto made a fight more satisfying for spectators than any he had made since Manny Pacquiao stopped him 30 months ago. And make no mistake, it was Cotto who made Saturday’s fight. In round 2, he put Mayweather on the ropes – and Referee Tony Weeks left him there – and it led to a heap more abuse than Mayweather expected, all postfight protestations to the contrary.

In implying afterwards that his initial trip to the ropes was voluntary, that allowing Cotto to whale on his arms and sternum was plan A, Mayweather struck a curiously familiar note; those were Roy Jones’ words immediately after he sneaked past Antonio Tarver in 2003: I went to the ropes to entertain my fans. But in actuality, as the world soon learned, Jones went to the ropes because his diminishing reflexes and footwork allowed Tarver to put him there.

A similar hollowness accompanied Mayweather’s words because his fans, like Jones’ before them, generally want no part in a competitive spectacle. They do not watch a Mayweather fight to see their guy endangered or struck on the face a hundred times. They watch for a transcendent display, for proof that super heroes happen off the pages of their comic books.

What little vocal reaction happened above the bullring at Cowboys Dancehall, Saturday, came just as the bell rang to end round 8, Cotto’s best.

“He ain’t doing nothing!” somebody barked.

“He ain’t nothing!” agreed a second voice, its volume proportionate to its nervousness.

Then Mayweather gave them a rebuttal that was articulate (since that word has come out of hiding): I am a fighter, not an entertainer. It was what Mayweather said in the third round of his match with Shane Mosley, when he put his hands in a classic, high position and attacked the older man. It was a phrase he spoke in his fourth round with Victor Ortiz when he exploited the younger man’s weakness to cut his consciousness. And it was what he said for 30 of Saturday’s 36 minutes with Miguel Cotto. I am this, primarily this, and not what most of you think I am.

Something often missed by Mayweather’s detractors and ever missed by his devotees: Before he was “Money May,” master of the era’s race-baiting nuances, before he made pundits who should know better assign unprecedented import to his undefeated record, he was a fighter – a man who collected blows for a living.

There was a touch of requited love in the way Mayweather handled Cotto’s head on a break in round 4, something almost tender about it. Another man was speaking to him fluently in their first language – not hip hop’s Ali-copycat speak, not the cloyed and serenaded words the mercenaries sing to Money, not those adverbial clauses everyone spits at video cameras – but the language of professional combat in a proper tongue. It betrayed for a moment what most observers do not realize: Other fighters genuinely adore Floyd Mayweather because he is, at root, exactly as they are.

But other fighters also know what historians will uncover: There is a reason you must fight the fights. Mayweather beat Cotto, yes, but does any knowledgeable observer think he is, today, a stronger man for doing it? He is not. Mayweather was brutalized, softened, his health compromised, his life likely shortened some, in those 12 rounds with another professional puncher. It was what both men signed up for, of course, and if Mayweather was not enthusiastic about paying the tariff, he was still, and absolutely, good for it.

Historians, those plodding, careful men who assess records not hand speed, will note Mayweather never fought or beat, in his prime, a man who was favored over him. It’s too late to change that, and subsequently Mayweather’s legacy is for the most part settled. But then, respectfully, so is this: Floyd Mayweather was and is more of a fighter than he was or ever will be anything else.

Bart Barry can be reached at bart.barrys.email (at) gmail.com