What Does the Return of Floyd Mayweather from Retirement Mean for Boxing?

The boxing world has been buzzing with the announcement (actually, the many announcements and speculations rumoring a pending announcement) that Floyd Mayweather is returning from retirement. While nothing has been made official as of yet, HBO is already blotting out their schedule so they can fit in a Mayweather return bout over the summer, and incessant rumors about his possible opponents have been circling and re-circling the internet's collective boxing clique.

That's where boxing news is delivered in 2009. Not on the front page of the paper, or on the front page of the sports section or even on a clever and catchphrase filled blurb during Sportscenter, but on the boxing forums and boxing news websites that cater to the already rabid boxing fan base.

Being a boxing fan is like being a restaurant patron who eagerly orders an all-you-can-eat dinner only to find out that you can only have one plate of food, the food will be served to you at a time not of your choosing and it will contain items you did not particularly look forward to eating. You'll have to pay triple the listed value of the all-you-can-eat meal just to get your one plate of food and then while you're eating your meal you'll have to field questions from everyone else in the establishment, including the restaurant owners themselves, about the tastiness and quality of the food you're eating and why you chose to ate it.

The return from retirement by Floyd Mayweather (a retirement that was at most taken half seriously by the boxing faithful) has sparked conversation that this is the jolt the sport needs to regain a foothold into America's conscientiousness (around the rest of the world, particularly in the UK where an entire soccer stadium will fill to watch a local hero or small countries such as the Phillipines, where star Manny Pacquiao is no longer a Golden Calf being falsely worshipped but may as well be The One dictating the book being written, this jolt is not needed).

But the news isn't reaching an audience outside of those who are already in an entangled and complicated love-hate relationship with the sport. Surely once Mayweather's return is made official, Sportscenter will run their blurb and a few newspapers will run a column, but there won't be any quaking tremors felt reverberating along the American sports and pop culture landscape.

So what effect could there be from a Floyd Mayweather un-retirement? The boxing heads will continue to yap away on the subject, but we do that anyway, about everything. Mayweather may make a few large fights, and juicy opponents are in the waiting such as the aforementioned Pacquiao, Shane Mosley and Miguel Cotto. Some pay-per-views will be sold, some pockets will be lined.

But the sport will not regain any foothold of popularity which has long since been lost. The popularity of the sport has been steadily sloping downward since the times when Jack Johnson, Jack Dempsey, Joe Louis and Rocky Marciano may as well have been not only the four heads of Mt. Rushmore, but also four equally regal Statues of Liberty, looming large over our landscape and welcoming one and all to the fantastic world of American sports, life and culture.

Boxing isn't dying, and it won't ever die. It's too much a part of our instincts and it tickles too many corners of our souls, launching emotions from despair to triumph, from sympathy to hatred, from fandom to despise and from laughter to fright.

Great American journalist A.J. Liebling was prone to lamenting the sad state of the boxing landscape in the late 1950s and 1960s compared to the 1920s and 1930s. At that time, the sport's smaller clubs and shows had been cannibalized and put out of business by the free boxing shows broadcast on television. As a result, many aspiring pugilists were forced into other lines of work and there was a perceived decrease in not just the quantity of the competition, but in the quality as well. (Little would he know that some 50 years later, it would be the free television shows that fans would wish the sport returned to, as opposed to the ineluctable $50 pay-per-view programs which have forced even more fans and would be boxers away).

Liebling once said that, "The desire to punch other boys in the nose will survive in our culture. The sprit of self-preservation will induce some boys to excel. Those who find they excel will try to turn a modest buck by it. It is an art of people, like making love, and is likely to survive any electronic gadget that peddles razor blades."

Boxing won't die, but it needs a great deal more than the return of Floyd Mayweather from retirement to permanently recapture the public's attention, imagination and auspices. I'd take a national commission designed to establish a superior amateur program and eliminate chaos along with a few prime time network television spots to start.