The build up to what is set to be the most lucrative fight in the history of boxing started in earnest this week with a press conference in Los Angeles that brought Floyd Mayweather Jnr and Manny Pacquaio face-to-face for the first time.

This is the fight that boxing has anticipated and sought more than any other over the past five or six years, yet now that it’s finally here it is hard to shake off a sense of anti-climax — the feeling that both fighters have passed their respective peaks, making the prospect of them sharing the ring less attractive than it was.

That said, the occasion remains massive, what with Mayweather’s star quality and the various strands of added drama over the bad blood that exists between Pacquaio’s trainer, the widely respected Freddie Roach, and Mayweather’s father Floyd Mayweather Snr, who’s in his corner. An edge is also provided by the appearance of Alex Ariza in the Mayweather camp.

Ariza replaced Justin Fortune as Pacquaio’s strength and conditioning trainer after Fortune and Roach had a serious falling out over money quite a few years back. 

Ariza, a controversial character, then went to work with Brandon Rios after being sacked by the Pacquaio camp. In the lead up to the Pacquaio v Rios fight in Macau, China, in 2013 the animosity between him and Roach spilled over into a physical altercation. 

With Fortune now back in the Pacquaio camp, and Ariza working with Mayweather, there’s enough drama in store in the build up to this fight to make a reality TV show.

But in the ring between the fighters is what’s most important, and though as mentioned this will undoubtedly be the biggest fight in boxing history in terms of the revenue it generates, it pales in comparison to some of the classic fights of the past in terms of its wider meaning.

Consider, for example, the Jack Johnson v Jim Jeffries heavyweight title fight that took place in Reno, Nevada, in 1910. 

At stake was more than prize money. At stake was racial pride at a time in the US when blacks were being lynched on a regular basis in the South and in the North were regarded as second-class citizens. 

At first Jeffries, the champion, refused to fight Johnson purely on the grounds that he was black. When he finally agreed to, after Johnson succeeded in shaming him into accepting the contest, racism flowed like a river of sewage. 

Jeffries was the first of many white heavyweights in boxing history to be held up as the “great white hope,” a title created by the writer Jack London.

Purportedly a socialist, London was a man for whom Darwin’s theory of survival of the fittest applied to humanity, which through the distorted prism of race evidenced the superiority of the white race over every other. 

But London and others of his ilk were given cause to think again, as Johnson proceeded to use the hapless white champion, Jeffries, as a punchbag on the way to claiming the title after stopping his opponent in the 15 round.

In 1936 and 1938 Joe Louis, the “Brown Bomber,” fought Germany’s Max Schmeling in two huge fights in which once again the poison of racism was present. 

Hitler and the Nazis were in power in Germany and Schmeling was cast in the role of champion of the Aryan “master race.” 

In the context of pre-second world war 1930s, with the rise of fascism throughout Europe and its increasing traction in the US, both fights were far more than mere heavyweight boxing bouts. They were pregnant with symbolism and political importance. 

Louis lost the first and won the second fight against Schmeling, with whom he later became close friends. 

But in victory the irony was thick given the prevalence of racism within the United States. 

Louis, like Johnson, was a hero within black communities throughout the country, illustrated in the account of the last words of a black death row inmate as he was about to be gassed to death: “Save me Joe Louis! Save me Joe Louis!” 

Emile Griffith was the first and remains the only gay world champion. When he fought Cuba’s Benny Paret in a welterweight world title bout in 1962, Paret turned it into an ugly affair, taking every opportunity to ridicule and abuse Griffith with homophobic slurs. 

The resulting fight was one of the most cruel ever fought, with Griffith handing his opponent such a beating he never regained consciousness and died 10 days later. 

It was a brutal contradiction of cultural values in which homosexuality and masculinity were considered antithetical and in which masculinity and violence are deemed two sides of the same coin. 

Finally, who can argue with the historical importance of a young and precocious Cassius Clay’s defeat of Sonny Liston in 1964 to claim the world heavyweight title.

The 22-year-old Clay was poetry in motion as he slipped and eluded the fearsome Liston’s heavy hands, dancing and moving around the ring like a fast middleweight. 

Upon Liston failing to come off his stool at the start of the seventh round, Clay went nuts, taunting the writers and journalists present, who almost to a man had favoured Liston, with the cry: “I shook up the world! I shook up the world!”

These words proved prophetic, as it was after this fight that he announced his membership of the Nation of Islam and informed the press that he no longer would he be known by the “slave name” Cassius Clay. 

It was the start of the legend of Muhammad Ali and sitting ringside at the Miami Convention Hall watching the legend hatch was Malcolm X, Ali’s confidante and adviser just prior to his own very public split from the Nation and its leader Elijah Muhammad. 

So while the Mayweather v Pacquiao fight is undoubtedly a huge fight, and comfortably the biggest of recent times, it possesses none of the political, social or historical significance of the aforementioned fights that have gone before and nor should it claim to.

Oh and, by the way, I’m picking Mayweather.