Pacman vs. Pretty Boy: Will they rumble after all?

To drug test or not, that's seems to be the nettlesome question that's threatening what should be the fight of this century: Manny Pacquiao vs. Floyd Mayweather Jr.

A childish dispute over drug testing looks like a lousy excuse for delaying the bout or for keeping it from happening altogether.

But what's surprising here?

Isn't this simply how professional boxing has been for the better part of 1990s and beyond?

The sport has given its fans this head-fake before. It has stoked interest in a signature match only to let trifling matters undo everything. What should be an easy fight for promoters Bob Arum and Richard Schaefer to make has become more complicated than the U.S. tax code or the "simple" instructions to a do-it-yourself project that promises even a caveman can do it.

Nothing falls into the easy category, however, when it comes to putting together big-time fights. Greed and ego ruin everything, so can stupidity, which is the reason Mayweather might not step into the ring against Pacquiao after all.

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Pacman vs. Pretty Boy: Is their fight on?

You can almost see Manny Pacquiao’s smile.

Check it out.

There his smile is in front of you -- a toothy grin that turns the Pacman’s features into a cartoonist's rendering, a wide and exaggerated visage that indicates he’s comfortable with his circumstances.

Did you see it?

You won't have to search hard for reasons behind Pacquiao's smiling. He has millions of reasons.

Fresh from his demolition last month of Miguel Cotto, Pacquiao learned his performance didn’t scare off “Pretty Boy” Floyd Mayweather Jr., an unbeaten fighter who has to be smiling broadly himself. He got Mayweather's people to agree in principle on a contract; he did so without all the posturing that often attaches itself to Mayweather like Velcro.

Oh, his people had been floating hints that to make this mega-fight happen, they would insist Mayweather earns the lion’s share of a princely purse. They tried to convince everybody that he was the top draw for PPV subscribers, not the pint-sized Pacquiao.

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Wanted: A heavyweight fans care about

Boxing is a dead sport walking, some people contend. And they might be right if they’re judging the sport on the men who lord over the heavyweight division.

Quick, can you name any of the division’s No. 1 contenders?

Only the most diehard fan can, because the heavyweight division is a mishmash of nameless, faceless palookas that draw yawns from folks who still insist boxing matters.

Think this is an exaggeration? OK, did you know that the WBC champion defended his heavyweight belt Saturday night? Vitali Klitschko fought the tub of Jell-O known as Cris Arreola. No reason to offer details about a fight that nobody noticed. Klitschko fighting anybody wouldn’t fill a middle-school gym unless the promoter gave away most of the tickets.

Making a fight fan fork over cash to watch the bout on pay-per-view television is about as appealing as paying top dollar for box seats to an Indians-Orioles game. Or, more to the sport, paying for ringside seats to see Larry Holmes (old and beyond his fighting weight) and Muhammad Ali (old and in poor health) fight again.

Sentimental value, perhaps; as high art, well … retired fighters in their 60s ought to stay retired.

And plodding fighters like Klitschko need to get out of the sport, too. Then again, he can’t be blamed for what’s happened to the most prestigious division in boxing. Not since Lennox Lewis retired in 2003 has the heavyweight division had a fighter anybody cared about, and even Lewis wasn’t a headliner in the Mike Tyson mold.

This is the nadir of the division. It had a transitional period after Rocky Marciano retired unbeaten in the 1950s and again when Viet Nam-era politics put Ali’s career in limbo during the ’70s. But the sports revived itself; it found new personalities to carry the banner of yesteryear’s greats.

But where are those personalities today? They can’t be found in Klitschko and his brother Wladimir, who combine to hold three of the four heavyweight belts. Before the bout Saturday, the two brothers had beaten two unknowns -- Ruslan Chagaev and Juan Carlos Gomez -- this year.

Did anybody notice those fights? Did the bouts make the SportsCenter highlights? Did they give fight fans things to talk about?

This is not to denigrate the Klitschko brothers. They can’t be faulted for breaking into boxing during a period when the heavyweight championship isn’t the glamorous title it used to be. Nor can they be faulted for being Ukrainian and for not being able to build a following among American fans.

The division might benefit if the Klitschkos played the role of the evil Soviets, stealing a persona that helped pro wrestling thrive: good vs. bad. But the ill-well toward Ukrainians isn’t what it was during the Cold War and when the Soviet Union stood as a threat to Americans.

That threat no longer exists, of course. And a legitimate American threat in the heavyweight division doesn’t exist either. Absent one, the division can’t grab the attention it once held.

That has allowed the smaller weight divisions to take the spotlight. The Juan Miguel Marquez-Floyd Mayweather bout eight days ago packed the MGM Grand and drew one-million buys as a pay-per-view attraction.

Klitschko-Arreola filled nothing, and the bout probably didn't draw a million viewers on cable TV, which is a pity. Then again, maybe the lack of interest in this bout simply proved that a boxer's size never should have been important when judging talent inside the squared circle.

The little men have always put on a great show.

(Photo of Vitali Klitschko by sunshinetrue's photostream)

Oscar's wrong: Take 'Pretty Boy' to win

Don’t listen to Oscar De La Hoya. I’m not saying De La Hoya has lost his damn mind, but, well … if the man thinks Juan Manuel Marquez will beat Floyd Mayweather Jr., then the "Golden Boy" has taken a few too many blows to the head.

The Marquez-Mayweather fight, which De La Hoya is promoting, takes place tomorrow night in Las Vegas, and the bout has the potential to be the 2009 Fight of the Year, which isn’t saying much for a sport that is becoming as irrelevant in the United States as cricket.

For a lot of reasons, Mayweather and Marquez should have fought awhile ago -- long before Mayweather took a 21-month sabbatical to do whatever uber-rich, self-absorbed personalities like him do when they have too much idle time and money but no common sense.

Nobody expected Mayweather to stay retired. What fighter does anymore? Which one of them can shake a love jones for the limelight?

De La Hoya couldn't. He made more comebacks than Brett Favre, and the last championship-caliber fighter who retired and stayed retired was heavyweight champ Lennox Lewis, although you keep thinking in the back of your mind that he’ll be stepping back into the ring, too.

But it is hard for fighters with Mayweather’s skills to leave millions on the table. Glib, flashy and unbeaten, he could be a marketing man’s dream: a bad boy plays well with the boxing crowd. If he had any social grace, Mayweather could be an iconic figure like Sugar Ray Leonard and De La Hoya himself.

The image he has cultivated is like the heel in pro wrestling. His talent inside the ring is obvious for even the most unschooled fight fans, but his crass behavior and loose, vulgar tongue make him the easy foil of those who would like to see less talk and more action.

He’s not likely to give them that in his Pay-Per-View fight against Marquez, a dangerous fighter who has had his share of wars inside the ring. At 36, Marquez, a five-time world champion, has left his best years behind him. His high-risk style is tailored for Mayweather to beat.

His speed will frustrate Marquez, just as that speed frustrated De La Hoya when he lost to Mayweather in 2007. He’s also the bigger man, which will confound Marquez more than the speed does.

Styles make fights, as De La Hoya pointed out. That’s the good thing about this matchup between Mayweather and Marquez. It’s the slugger vs. the craftsman – a welterweight version of Joe Frazier vs. Muhammad Ali.

No amount of hype can bring the Mayweather-Marquez bout to the legendary heights of Frazier-Ali I and II. Nor can the inflated rhetoric of De La Hoya, the current generation’s version of Don King.

But De La Hoya has stepped into the fray, absent any reason to apologize for his prediction of a Marquez win.

"I'm convinced he will win this fight,” De La Hoya told Reuters. “He's looking sharp, he's looking fast and he's looking strong."

He’s also old, a fact that no fight fan can ignore. Beat Pretty Boy Floyd? Marquez will need more than De La Hoya’s prediction to accomplish that. Having Oscar in the ring with him, his gloves laced, might help.

(Photo of Floyd Mayweather Jr. by Madison Skye)