I'm setting aside my preference for Pacman and my derision of Floyd to say a few things.....

Even if at the end of the day, this is all some elaborately designed SUPER hype machine to build a fight....they played it too far. You can only yank the string (championship) away from the cat (boxing fans) so many times before the cat loses interest.

Boxing has long spent in the recent years hyping up the fights with press conferences and trashtalk, and most recently well constructed 24/7 shows on HBO and the like. This is all well and good. At a point, however, I have to point out that PBF has avoided some of the most publicly wanted fights by non-hardcore and hardcore fans on a number of occasions. Whether it was Shane Mosley, Williams, or Margarito (pre-revealing as a cheater)....PBF has avoided precisely the fights I wanted to see.Pacman could have stayed at some divisions longer than others, but by thrashing Cotto, Hatton, Morales, Marquez....i'm hard pressed to think of a fight I wanted to see him in that he did not fight.

I read a post by a boxing writer that said it doesn't make sense for Pacman to not submit to different testing. The writer obviously has no grasp of what part EGO plays in the mind of fighters at this level. You're talking about two guys that are debatedly 1 and/or 2 P4P in their sport....in the world. They are not the best free throw shooters, not the best receivers in sports only played in some countries...they are arguable the most skilled P4P boxers in the WORLD...and have shown so at multiple weight classes. I hate that Pacman's ego won't let him bend to Floyd's requests. I hate Floyd's ego that makes him request more stringent testing and public accusations founded on nothing at all.

I honestly wish Floyd had never un-retired. If he was going to un-retire to fight Marquez (what a joke) and whoever he takes on instead of Pacman....I could have done without the massive letdown. Boxing's full of fighters coming back to make more cash. I can't knock any man doing that. Period. I can knock someone who fills the airwaves with saying they're the greatest and then.......fighting Marquez well above his nat'l weight...and whoever's next. Both fighters are to blame and EGO is the main culprit.

In the end, EGO killed this fight....and even if it comes off....they killed a lot of the excitement that would have come with it. As I think about the fight, if right now, the fight was announced, I'd say, 'that's cool. It will be good for a number of reasons." Whereas before i was as intrigued by this fight as any that i can remember as a 27 year old man who missed out on the days of Duran, Leonard, Hagler, and Hearns. A lot of the hype however has deflated from the balloon. I would probably not go out of my way to find the countdown shows that I normally find some way to download or stream since I don't have premium channels....which is something I always do leading up to fights I care about.

This reminds me of Sugar Ray's presser where he deflated the balloon of fighting with Marvelous Marvin Hagler.....later on, sure it happened...but the balloon was deflated. This is like that.....you can only dangle the carrot so long before the carrot just loses its appeal. Sure if you find the carrot, you'll still eat it. But it just doesn't taste the same.