Pacquiao vs Mayweather: Jim Lampley Is Pessimistic That The Fight Happens

It seems that we always complain about Jim Lampley when he interjects his feelings into his play-by-play calls. The best example of this phenomenon is when Lampley tried to interject some excitement into a boring Manny Pacquiao fight and just started spouting absolute nonsense. Yet, he is getting his own boxing show on HBO, which will only make me miss BLH radio. Before his show airs, Michael Woods had a chance to ask him a couple questions about the potential Manny Pacquiao-Floyd Mayweather megafight.

"Pure speculation, my guess is it doesn't happen," Lampley told me. "They keep delaying it. It keeps not being the thing they want to do. It's sad and painful..I can't imagine twenty years from now, people telling Floyd or Manny, "That was the smartest thing you did, not fighting Pacquiao, or Mayweather." He pauses. "Now, I don't want to sound completely pessimistic. Maybe a better way to see it is like the old grandmas used to say: Don't hope for the new bicycle, you won't get it."

Lampley demonstrates the thinking that frustrates me in this quote. I completely and totally agree with him on the first part of this quote. Then he goes and says this absolutely strange analogy to Grandma's and bicycles. What's the moral of that saying? Don't openly hope for nice things because your Grandma is spiteful and will go out of her way to make sure it doesn't happen? I have no idea what that quote is supposed to convey, but I do think that both fighters are going to regret it if they don't fight each other and historians are going to lambast both of them for their stubbornness.

Lampley also echoes the statements of the HBO president Ken Hershman on the potential fight.

"I liked what (new HBO boxing boss) Ken Hershman said soon after he arrived, that Mayweather-Pacquiao is not life and death for the sport. It is very important to the psyche of sport but it isn't life or death."

Boxing will survive even if these two find enough excuses to fill Fort Knox. The fight will help boxing in the short-term but then what? Do people think that a megafight will create a young generation of boxing fans? Personally, I don't see it happening unless the fight turns out to be spectacular (Like fight of the decade spectacular). Do you guys think that a Pac-May superfight could create a new generation of boxing fans?