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- Feb 11, 2007
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Paradoxically for a man who keeps making history, Floyd Mayweather regards the past as another country, a place he has little interest in visiting, often with good reason. Nevertheless, he wants the concluding chapters to his story to be memorable ones.
In the past seven years, he has knocked out just one opponent – Victor Ortiz in 2011 with a sneak right hand – an oversight he says he is going to correct when he defends his world welterweight titles against Marcos Maidana for the second time at the MGM Grand Garden Arena on Saturday night. As he approaches the end of his career, the 37-year-old five division champion who has rarely been inconvenienced in the ring needs a knockout, as he admitted this week.
He needs it for the sort of statement reserved for professional fighters, the only athletes in sport licensed to inflict intentional, life-threatening hurt on opponents without fear of prosecution.
He needs it because, in a business that lives on bloodlust, Mayweather, its most compelling practitioner and widely regarded as the most skilful since Sugar Ray Leonard, has a method that is the stylistic counterpoint to the neanderthal urge.
Mayweather is a boxer supreme, for whom knockouts are a weapon of last resort. His stoppage rate in 46 wins over 18 years is a tick over 56%. In blocks of 10 bouts, eight before-schedule wins arrived between 1996 and 1997, six between 1997 and 1999, three and a retirement between 1999 and 2003, and four between 2003 and 2009, one of those inflicted on Ricky Hatton, who seven years ago stuck his chin in front of the most artful left hook seen in a ring since the other Sugar Ray, Robinson, kayoed Gene Fullmer in 1957.
So Mayweather is looking for a knockout, a big, juicy KO. He is feted as the finest boxer at work today, but the glow is fading. He has been in trouble away from the ring before, several times, but his ham-fisted, later retracted, support of the woman-beating NFL star Ray Rice this week pitched him perilously towards the sort of opprobrium that can wreck a good box office.
Floyd Mayweather, left, and Marcos Maidana in their first fight in May which was won on a controversial majority decision by Mayweather.
It is doubtful he did much damage to pay-per-view sales, but he did them no help, either. There will be a significant number of fans who might not turn on to watch what is, in truth, nowhere near matching the billing it has been given. When Mayweather said, "This is a fight everybody wants to see," he surely was talking about Argentina, Maidana's homeland, because the buzz in Vegas is muted.
The interest is not in a bout between equals; it is in that grim prospect of disaster, which is what a Mayweather defeat would be for everyone in boxing but Maidana. Those contenders queueing up to get a lucrative crack at him before he retires next September, with Amir Khan near the top of the list, would be no more pleased than Showtime, who have invested heavily in him.
Mayweather is not a great student of his sport, airily dismissing the fact he is on schedule to equal Rocky Marciano's career mark of 49-0 with two fights after this one. However, as he searches for the knockout to restore his aura and salve his ego, the performance to lift him again on to the plinth he knows is reserved for him, he could do worse than look back to that Robinson left hook on Fullmer, described as the most perfect of its kind ever captured on film, in Chicago on 1 May, 1957.
Robinson, too, was 37. The fight was also a rematch – although Fullmer, 11 years his junior, had won the first, four months earlier, to take the world middleweight title. Robinson had, at that point in his career, 101 more fights than Mayweather has on his record now, and Ray had lost just five.
As was Hatton's dilemma, there was nothing Fullmer could do when, having flexed his left shoulder in readiness to throw his own left hook, Ray's left arm carved a perfect arc to land with maximum force and speed on to the chosen point of Gene's chin.
Fighters are not as well schooled or as gnarled today. Although Maidana is 31, six years older than Fullmer was the night he fought Robinson, he has had 39 fights to Gene's 40. Although he is, as Mayweather described him this week, "a rough, tough opponent", it would be boxing blasphemy to put him alongside Fullmer, who had two wins and a draw in four fights against Robinson, the last in 1961, when he was on the slide.
Can the Argentinian do a Fullmer on Mayweather? He has a Fullmeresque ruggedness and a bigger punch, one of the best stoppage records in boxing at nearly 80 per cent, but he will attract little educated investment in the gambling capital of sport. Just as Mayweather craves a dramatic win to repair some psychic wounds and to restore his reputation, so Maidana will be searching for the knockout -and what an event that would be. Such an ending would justify the ambitions of Showtime's executive vice-president Stephen Espinoza, who said the other day, this would, "most likely be the fight of the year".
The odds on that are long – but a dramatic knockout is the only way Maidana can win. It is being cynical rather than conspiratorial to point out that if Mayweather, the most fecund cash cow in the history of boxing, lost his title on points in Las Vegas when two fights short of fulfilling his six-bout deal with Showtime, the crash heard around the MGM would be Espinoza and his friends banging their heads on the floor.
Maidana's knowledge of ring history is not known; he has never talked much about his sport beyond the job in hand. But, if he were looking for an omen, he might profit from watching the 1943 fight between Robinson and Jake La Motta, when the Raging Bull knocked Ray down and almost out (the bell saving him in the eighth) to inflict his first professional defeat on him in his 41st fight.
That bout, a non-title affair over 10 rounds in Detroit, set in train one of the sport's memorable rivalries.
I asked Mayweather this week whether he regretted never having established such a one-on-one, career-enhancing legacy. He answered cautiously. "I think there is a total difference. I make A level and B level fighters look ordinary. I take my hat off to all those guys. They paved the way for me to be where I'm at. All those guys were remarkable fighters and I respect them."
And yet the most remarkable of them, Manny Pacquiao, despite his renewed optimism of signing a deal with Mayweather, might never share a ring with this enigmatic man. At the weigh-in on Friday Maidana was 10st 6lb, with Mayweather half a pound heavier.
Source: TheGuardian
In the past seven years, he has knocked out just one opponent – Victor Ortiz in 2011 with a sneak right hand – an oversight he says he is going to correct when he defends his world welterweight titles against Marcos Maidana for the second time at the MGM Grand Garden Arena on Saturday night. As he approaches the end of his career, the 37-year-old five division champion who has rarely been inconvenienced in the ring needs a knockout, as he admitted this week.
He needs it for the sort of statement reserved for professional fighters, the only athletes in sport licensed to inflict intentional, life-threatening hurt on opponents without fear of prosecution.
He needs it because, in a business that lives on bloodlust, Mayweather, its most compelling practitioner and widely regarded as the most skilful since Sugar Ray Leonard, has a method that is the stylistic counterpoint to the neanderthal urge.
Mayweather is a boxer supreme, for whom knockouts are a weapon of last resort. His stoppage rate in 46 wins over 18 years is a tick over 56%. In blocks of 10 bouts, eight before-schedule wins arrived between 1996 and 1997, six between 1997 and 1999, three and a retirement between 1999 and 2003, and four between 2003 and 2009, one of those inflicted on Ricky Hatton, who seven years ago stuck his chin in front of the most artful left hook seen in a ring since the other Sugar Ray, Robinson, kayoed Gene Fullmer in 1957.
So Mayweather is looking for a knockout, a big, juicy KO. He is feted as the finest boxer at work today, but the glow is fading. He has been in trouble away from the ring before, several times, but his ham-fisted, later retracted, support of the woman-beating NFL star Ray Rice this week pitched him perilously towards the sort of opprobrium that can wreck a good box office.
Floyd Mayweather, left, and Marcos Maidana in their first fight in May which was won on a controversial majority decision by Mayweather.
It is doubtful he did much damage to pay-per-view sales, but he did them no help, either. There will be a significant number of fans who might not turn on to watch what is, in truth, nowhere near matching the billing it has been given. When Mayweather said, "This is a fight everybody wants to see," he surely was talking about Argentina, Maidana's homeland, because the buzz in Vegas is muted.
The interest is not in a bout between equals; it is in that grim prospect of disaster, which is what a Mayweather defeat would be for everyone in boxing but Maidana. Those contenders queueing up to get a lucrative crack at him before he retires next September, with Amir Khan near the top of the list, would be no more pleased than Showtime, who have invested heavily in him.
Mayweather is not a great student of his sport, airily dismissing the fact he is on schedule to equal Rocky Marciano's career mark of 49-0 with two fights after this one. However, as he searches for the knockout to restore his aura and salve his ego, the performance to lift him again on to the plinth he knows is reserved for him, he could do worse than look back to that Robinson left hook on Fullmer, described as the most perfect of its kind ever captured on film, in Chicago on 1 May, 1957.
Robinson, too, was 37. The fight was also a rematch – although Fullmer, 11 years his junior, had won the first, four months earlier, to take the world middleweight title. Robinson had, at that point in his career, 101 more fights than Mayweather has on his record now, and Ray had lost just five.
As was Hatton's dilemma, there was nothing Fullmer could do when, having flexed his left shoulder in readiness to throw his own left hook, Ray's left arm carved a perfect arc to land with maximum force and speed on to the chosen point of Gene's chin.
Fighters are not as well schooled or as gnarled today. Although Maidana is 31, six years older than Fullmer was the night he fought Robinson, he has had 39 fights to Gene's 40. Although he is, as Mayweather described him this week, "a rough, tough opponent", it would be boxing blasphemy to put him alongside Fullmer, who had two wins and a draw in four fights against Robinson, the last in 1961, when he was on the slide.
Can the Argentinian do a Fullmer on Mayweather? He has a Fullmeresque ruggedness and a bigger punch, one of the best stoppage records in boxing at nearly 80 per cent, but he will attract little educated investment in the gambling capital of sport. Just as Mayweather craves a dramatic win to repair some psychic wounds and to restore his reputation, so Maidana will be searching for the knockout -and what an event that would be. Such an ending would justify the ambitions of Showtime's executive vice-president Stephen Espinoza, who said the other day, this would, "most likely be the fight of the year".
The odds on that are long – but a dramatic knockout is the only way Maidana can win. It is being cynical rather than conspiratorial to point out that if Mayweather, the most fecund cash cow in the history of boxing, lost his title on points in Las Vegas when two fights short of fulfilling his six-bout deal with Showtime, the crash heard around the MGM would be Espinoza and his friends banging their heads on the floor.
Maidana's knowledge of ring history is not known; he has never talked much about his sport beyond the job in hand. But, if he were looking for an omen, he might profit from watching the 1943 fight between Robinson and Jake La Motta, when the Raging Bull knocked Ray down and almost out (the bell saving him in the eighth) to inflict his first professional defeat on him in his 41st fight.
That bout, a non-title affair over 10 rounds in Detroit, set in train one of the sport's memorable rivalries.
I asked Mayweather this week whether he regretted never having established such a one-on-one, career-enhancing legacy. He answered cautiously. "I think there is a total difference. I make A level and B level fighters look ordinary. I take my hat off to all those guys. They paved the way for me to be where I'm at. All those guys were remarkable fighters and I respect them."
And yet the most remarkable of them, Manny Pacquiao, despite his renewed optimism of signing a deal with Mayweather, might never share a ring with this enigmatic man. At the weigh-in on Friday Maidana was 10st 6lb, with Mayweather half a pound heavier.
Source: TheGuardian
