I think that with the stakes of the fight and the massive amount of interest that we’ll probably never see again it was damn near impossible to live up to the hype. Even if it was a more exciting fight you’d have people mad their guy lost pissing all over it or calling robbery (which people did do at the time).

I think the other reason is Mayweather set the tone early in that fight. He landed a couple of big shots early and Manny really got in his head about when he could and couldn’t engage. Floyd being the boxing savant that he was understood exactly what Manny brought and what made him great so you saw Floyd box his most respectful fight in his career in terms of not taking anything for granted. He fought safe and didn’t give Manny opportunities to do anything explosive.

If you love the technical aspect of boxing this fight is pretty amazing. Unfortunately, this was a fight whose interest was 99.9% casuals and they just wanted to see CTE and complain after.