A bout like Pacquiao-Mayweather brings out primitive passion among crowd as well as the boxers

People take photos in front of a Mayweather Promotions bus parked in front of MGM Grand Hotel in Las Vegas. Ethan Miller / Getty Images

Nothing in sport compares to the atmosphere inside the arena before a big boxing match. Your heart pounds. Your pulse rises. Even if, as a journalist, you have no stake in the result.

The nervous energy is palpable. You feel as if you have been wired into a low-level electric current; the temptation is to ask your neighbour if your hair is standing on end – if only your neighbour could hear you over the din of a well-heeled crowd drunk with bloodlust.

After the preliminary bouts are complete, the arena finally fills to the limit as A-listers, who minutes before were doing deals or just being seen out on the concourse, find their ringside seats.

The anticipation builds as the boxers and their entourages, one after the other, enter the venue, usually to thumping music that rattles the innards. The zenith of a communal frenzy is reached when the bell for Round 1 rings and the audience explodes.

Kick-off at a World Cup final, tip-off at Game 7 of an NBA championship, the moments before the 100-metre-dash final at an Olympics – none of it matches the sensory overload of a long-awaited boxing bout.

I can vouch for this, having seen dozens of major fights, from Muhammad Ali versus Larry Holmes in 1980 through the Mike Tyson “bite fight” with Evander Holyfield in 1997 to the Floyd Mayweather Jr bout with Oscar De La Hoya in 2007.

Each left most spectators as drained as the fighters. What makes big boxing matches different from all other sports experiences?

Some of it is the weeks of anticipation. Some is the appreciation of elite sportsmen squaring off. Some of it is about the prospect of blood being spilt for your entertainment.

Boxing remains nearly unique on two levels. It is one of two sports in which you will see men in the crowd wearing dinner jackets, figure skating being the other. And it is nearly the only sport in which one man can beat to death another man and not be charged with a crime.

The parallels between boxing and gladiatorial bouts have often been made. Man against man, the destruction of his opponent his sole aim, as jaded elites look on.

Of course, fans don’t want to see anyone badly hurt.

Or do they?

Is that the dirty secret, the magnetic attraction that keeps boxing alive? Is that what we feel as the adrenalin drips before the bell rings? “My” champion against “your” champion? With national or tribal or clan pride at stake?

A crowd of nearly 17,000 will watch, with their own eyes, as Manny Pacquaio and Mayweather fight at the MGM Grand Garden Arena. And each of them will feel that frisson of primitive passion that reconnects us to the earliest generations of our species.

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