By Bart Barry–
Editor’s note: For part five, please click here.
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But how will this influence resolve itself?
Three of the most influential artists of the 20th century – Pablo Picasso and Joan Miro and Salvador Dali – grew up in Catalonia, wandering through Barcelona looking upwards at the architectural masterpieces of Antoni Gaudi, edifices that, in their sublime eccentricities, gave the artists permission. That is perhaps what is most essential in any consideration of influence: Good artists encourage imitation, but the greatest give permission.
Find an aspiring American writer who has read Ernest Hemingway and not endeavored, at once, to ape his style. It rarely succeeds but presents a valuable exercise of sorts for long as it is tried. To read the last 100 or so pages of Leo Tolstoy’s “War and Peace” or Herman Melville’s “Moby Dick”, though, is to attain a permission slip; in his closing philosophical treatise on world history and its actors, an awkward and fully unpredictable turn at the end of a work of fiction, Tolstoy permits his successors to intervene in the course of their narratives wherever creative impulse dictates; in the unorthodox arc of Melville’s whalechase, its steady acceleration till very nearly the last sentence, Melville permits his successors to toy with the shape of what stories they recount, breaking with the linearity young novelists now infer from cinema.
A visit to Museu Picasso de Barcelona shows the importance of influence, of Picasso’s journey as a young artist from wishing to imitate Francisco Goya to interpreting Bartolome Esteban Murillo to his frequent returns, through 50 years, to Diego Velazquez, returns that culminated in his many renditions of Velazquez’s “Las Meninas” – probably the greatest masterpiece of Spain, a country that measures its masterpieces in kilometers. But everywhere within Picasso’s work, finally, is the first influence, Gaudi, and the permission Picasso gathered from wandering among the unpredictable and impractical masterworks of Gaudi – the way Barcelona’s celebration of Gaudi influences, via what permission it gives, any artist who wanders its streets. It is a permission one might interpret like: Pursue beauty, however construed, and worry not where the pursuit takes you.
There is an important influence that happens now in boxing, and it may be better than expected for fighters, while it lasts, and much worse for aficionados. Floyd Mayweather, when he encourages stylistic imitation, leads nowhere friendly for his successors, exactly as Roy Jones and Muhammad Ali did before him, and Mayweather’s influence is large: Spend a year asking young fighters whom their favorite active fighter is, and regardless of your phrasing, those fighters invariably will answer a question like “what contemporary prizefighter who shares your ethnicity or physical attributes have you heard made the most money last year?”
As Ali launched a generation of fighters shuffling sideways with their hands senselessly low, Mayweather now encourages a generation of fighters – most lacking his reflexes, many lacking his chin, all lacking his foundational footwork – to make an ‘L’ with their right elbows and left forearms while tilting sideways. However well it worked as a career extender for Mayweather, once his navigating to higher classes voided what substantial power he showed at lightweight, it is a terrible way to teach a youngster to box on his first day.
Stylistically, then, Mayweather’s influence has not benefitted his successors. Philosophically, though, Mayweather’s influence may be a better one than usually considered. In creating an odious character popular culture alternately finds repugnant and wonderful, in being nimble enough to piss-off Americans with means, anew and afresh every six months, Mayweather has made sums of money disproportionate to what peril attends his prizefights. That a professional fighter found a way to become exceedingly rich for what he does outside the ring more than what he does within it, in a way spectators find perverse as retired fighters find it envious, ensures Mayweather’s influence for many years to come.
No fighter in history has finagled a reward-to-risk ratio like Mayweather’s, and when one considers the age of our sport, that is a feat. Even May 2, the toughest match of Mayweather’s career, is more hypothetical risk, as usual, than real: Whatever miracles mark the career of Manny Pacquiao, this fact remains: In 5 1/2 years as a welterweight, Pacquiao has never knocked-out a 147-pound man (Miguel Cotto was 145 when Pacquiao stopped him in their 12th round together).
The peril that adorns May 2, then, is not physical so much as reputational; is there some way Pacquiao can give Mayweather his first professional loss? That’s something, sure, but it’s disproportionately less than Mayweather’s projected purse should require. Disappointed as most aficionados will be the morning of May 3, when, hungover, they realize they were duped again, this time, more painfully still, duped by a fight they wasted years demanding, there is a small part within most of us that feels sympathy, ugliness really, for the hundreds of fighters we’ve watched sacrifice their wits for $200 a round.
Setting aside empty rhetorical devices like “honor” or “legacy” or “pride” – political words whose employment routinely precedes a sinister manipulation of some sort – what Mayweather has done for himself, and thus far himself alone, is reset the price-to-entertainment balance dramatically in a fighter’s favor. If this were to become a sustainable thing, it would not be the worst development in our sport’s generally sordid history. It will not be a sustainable thing, most likely, regardless of whatever May 2 ends up meaning in the year 2025 (probably very, very little), but it’s a fun exercise, nevertheless, and a doorway to the nature of influence, a thing boxing shares with all arts.
No, Mayweather is not Gaudi – though the late Andy Warhol surely would have delighted himself with portraits of “Money May” – but then, neither was Picasso or Miro or Dali . . .
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Editor’s note: For part seven, please click here.
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Bart Barry can be reached via Twitter @bartbarry