Well, the “fight of the century” is over and it feels like nobody won what they could have won. Mayweather, of course, walks away with the victory and the unified welterweight title…whatever the hell that means. In this era of myriad belts and incremental weight classes, the only title that really matters is lineal pound for pound, but I suppose that was settled tonight as well, albeit in a supremely unsatisfying fashion. But what Mayweather didn’t win was a place among the all-time greats. He did not come away with his much-toted moniker TBE (The Best Ever) validated, despite yet another technically astounding display of boxing that made his opponent look average. Technical prowess can build incredible careers, but it doesn’t sustain legends in memorandum.

The paradox of boxing is that for fighters to become immortal they must first be proven human; to appear fallible and consequently vulnerable, and then to transcend that vulnerability through strength of character. The key is for us, the audience, the people who create the legends, to be able to draw a connecting line between the legend and ourselves. To be able to trace the trajectory from mortal to immortal so that we can, at least in our hearts and minds, accompany them into myth. But tonight Mayweather was once again more like a machine than a person, clinically doing the perfect thing without fail, again and again, round after round, frustrating the attempts of a Manny Pacquiao who looked all too vulnerable, all too over-matched, and all too human. A fight that was supposed to bring the untouchable Mayweather out of the stratosphere, wound up distancing him from us yet further, and although he is undoubtedly satisfied with the victory, it will wind up haunting him when he finally hangs up the gloves and his legacy becomes a finite thing to be weighed and measured against those of other past greats.

The paradox of boxing is that for fighters to become immortal they must first be proven human; to appear, in other words, fallible and consequently vulnerable, and then to transcend that vulnerability through strength of character.

Pacquiao, of course, lost the fight and the WBO welterweight title, but he could have lost both of those things and still come away a winner in a larger more important sense. Had he done what everyone expected and hoped he would—namely force Mayweather to fight, either by stealing enough rounds through sheer work ethic to put Mayweather on the offensive or by hurting Mayweather enough to force Floyd to open up to keep him off—he could have come away a hero, even in defeat. Instead, he went out there and did what every other Mayweather opponent (with the asterisked exceptions of Zab Judah, Miguel Cotto, and Marcos Maidana) has done: fall under the peculiar Mayweather spell which manifests in a tendency to hang around in the center of the ring and come straight ahead into Floyd’s perfectly timed counters. Why did he not circle, and attack from angles as so many experts wanted him to? Why did he not vary his offense on the rare occasions he got Mayweather to cover up on the ropes? Why, in the 10th-12th rounds, when he must have known he was behind on points—and, for reasons I will explain later, I don’t think we can take Manny’s bizarre post-fight: “I thought I won the fight. He didn’t do nothing but dance on the outside.” quotation seriously; he or someone in his corner had to have known they were well behind by the close of the ninth—did he not sell out and go for the knockout?

No doubt more details on Pacquiao’s total inability to produce anything more than a few flashes of greatness will emerge in the days to come. At present we are left to contemplate the strange and, one couldn’t help but feel, incredibly sad interview the Pacman gave in the ring post-fight. Remember what Pacquiao said in the ring after Timothy Bradley got that horrible decision win over him in 2012? “I accept what the result is, I respect the judge’s. [Do you think you won the fight?] Absolutely yes.” Then he was the picture of deferential sportsmanship in the face of a clear robbery, yet here, in a fight in which even the most pro-Pacquiao fan couldn’t have given him more than five rounds, he’s claiming he won the fight and that Mayweather didn’t do anything? Can we take this as anything other than self-denial? I don’t think so. And consider the possibility that, given the level of perfectionism and work ethic we have come to expect from Manny, the discrepancy in his reactions to the Bradley and Mayweather decisions might have less to do with objective reality, and more to do with how the Pacman perceived his own performance. That is: Pacman was willing to accept defeat in a fight he clearly won because he knew he had performed well. But tonight, I think it’s fair to say—hell you could see it writ large on the face of Pacquiao’s trainer, Freddie Roach, who looked like a child on the verge of tears as he hovered in the background while Manny’s post-fight interview was going down—Manny and his camp know that he didn’t live up to anyone’s expectations, least of all their own, and one clear way to avoid that cold mean reality is to deny that it exists, to pretend, even for just a few moments, that the fight actually played out dramatically different than it really did.

And of course, the fans didn’t win what we could have either, even those of us who were hoping for a Mayweather victory. After the fight, Mike Tyson, who was at the MGM for the event, tweeted: “We waited 5 years for that…#‎underwhelmed‬‬ #‎MayPac‬‬“. Tyson, keep in mind, was part of the last fight comparable to this one in terms of its importance to the legacies of the fighters involved. That was the Tyson/Lewis fight of 2002, a match-up that, like this one, paired the two most respected fighters in their weight class, five years after everyone wanted it to happen. But unlike this fight, that one ended with Tyson flat on his back, bloodied and drained, having done all he could to track down and tag a fitter, longer, cagier, Lewis. That fight wasn’t as competitive as we wanted it to be, but the constant threat of Tyson’s power at least gave Lewis a sense of urgency, and the event was redeemed somewhat by the fact that Tyson went out on his shield, giving it everything he had, trying to do what he had promised: knock Lewis out. That fight, and Tyson’s subsequent graciousness in defeat, went a long way towards reconciling the unpopular fighter with a public who had largely forsaken him. We had hoped for something to surpass that night tonight, and Tyson spoke for all of us when he stated that it clearly had not.

Mayweather remains something too far overhead to be properly seen. An Icarus whose wings have never been exposed to enough heat to plunge him back to the earthly plane. Pacquiao was not only incapable of bringing that heat tonight, he was incapable even of rising to Mayweather’s level. If anything, there was a sense that Mayweather was playing down to his opponent, as always doing just enough, holding a little in reserve if the unexpected happened and Manny managed to lever himself up. It’s unlikely now that—whoever Mayweather picks for his 49th, and almost certainly final, professional fight—we will ever see him have to draw out those last resources. Because of that, he will never be an Ali, a Sugar Ray Leonard or Robinson, or a Joe Louis. We will never see him dragged out of the sky into deep water where he’ll have to survive, not on talent or skill, but on raw endurance and will. There’s no fighter he’s likely to fight now who can do that to him. Manny was our last shot. They’ll go down as number one and two of their era, but because Manny didn’t bring it tonight, and because Mayweather didn’t have to, well…what we saw wasn’t legendary after all. It was only history, just like now, and now, and now.