Mayweather all tongue, with no balls

Floyd Mayweather Jr. will likely win over Manny Pacquiao if their much-anticipated fight ever happens. This is not to say that I would not like Pacquiao to beat Mayweather to a pulp. Nothing would make my day more than to see Mayweather hit the deck, all cut up and bruised. And more importantly silenced and humbled. But what I want may not be the turnout I expect.

No matter how loathsome the guy is, the reality is that Mayweather is a class of his own as a fighter. He is not unbeaten for nothing. It is not a fluke that he is pound for pound king. And while his knockout record is not as impressive as that of Pacquiao, make no mistake about it. If Pacquiao walks into a haymaker from Mayweather, like he did into one courtesy of Juan Manuel Marquez, Pacquiao could certainly find himself on queer street.

If Pacquiao lands one of his own, though, Mayweather will not only find himself on queer street, he might even wake up in the hospital. For if the fight does happen, the punches of Pacquiao will not only bear the weight of their own strength, they will carry with them the collective desire of the entire Filipino nation to shut the loudmouth up.

But it is one thing to get carried away by our passions, and another to view everything objectively, as all boxing must. One has to remember that Mayweather looks at a fight with Pacquiao ambivalently. Nothing would please Mayweather more than to fight Pacquiao and beat the Filipino. On the other hand, nothing scares the shit out of Mayweather more than to fight Pacquiao and lose.

If the fight happens, therefore, one has to anticipate which persona of Mayweather would prevail -- the Mayweather wanting to win or the Mayweather scared of losing. With an unbeaten record he wants to preserve, and a very real prospect of losing, the Mayweather that would come out, I think, is the Mayweather that wants to win. And that is what scares me. That is what a world wanting to see a great fight should be very very scared of.

A Mayweather wanting to win will want to win the easy way. It will be a Mayweather who will not fight. It will be a Mayweather preferring to wind down every round all tucked up in his vaunted defense. It will be a Mayweather who will not recklessly slug it out with Pacquiao. It will be a Mayweather who is convinced that a fight that goes the distance with Pacquiao is a fight that will be in his favor.

He is convinced, and I am inclined to go along with him, that in a fight that is up for decision, the scores are likely to swing to his favor than they would to Pacquiao. Mayweather will just coast along and then collect his money. And in all likelihood, he will have inserted a clause in their pre-fight contract that the option to reject a rematch is his and his alone.

Thus, if Mayweather wins, by whatever manner, that will probably be the end of his storied rivalry with Pacquiao. He is not likely to tempt fate or push his luck. If it has been this difficult to even get the fight -- as of today there is still no fight on the horizon -- it will be even more difficult for him to agree to a second fight if he wins the first.

There are, however, many people who believe the fight will not happen at all. And they have good reason to believe so. Mayweather has all been hot air regarding the prospect of fighting Pacquiao. He taunts Pacquiao no end, as if taunting is the same as an actual fight in the ring. He thinks that by hurling all sorts of insults and insinuations, it will settle the long-standing question of who is truly the best in the world.

Mayweather has been claiming that he is the best. And there is no stopping him from doing so. The problem is, the longer he keeps talking without fighting, the more ridiculous he will sound to people. In fact, Mayweather is fast becoming the laughing stock in his own country, and largely because of his own doing. Having once been jailed for domestic violence, it does not do well for his credibility to keep on talking and not putting his money where his mouth is.

Pacquiao is in no danger of losing his credibility because he has not initiated any of the talks about a coming fight. He is merely reacting to them. All the talk about a possible fight came from only one source -- Mayweather. He keeps saying he wants to fight and then lays down conditions that are next to impossible to meet or comply.

Well, most people are not as dumb as Mayweather thinks they are. They know that when it comes to Pacquiao, Mayweather has all been hubris so far. People can see through all the ruses that Mayweather has been laying down before Pacquiao and fight fans all over the world. People are now growing tired of Mayweather's antics. They are beginning to see just how scared Mayweather really is.

Mayweather is not a sissy in the conventional sense. You would not take up fighting if you were one. But Mayweather is scared of Pacquiao and the very distinct possibility that he could lose to him and lose very badly. Mayweather has been losing sleep over that possibility. And the only way he can mask his fright is by taking the only initiative safe enough for him -- by reducing his fight with Pacquiao to a mere talking match. Mayweather is all tongue. He has no balls to lick them with.