Floyd Mayweather Jr. – Is He Getting Diminishing Returns?

By Boxing News - 04/26/2008 - Comments

mayweather-hatton4444.jpgBy Chet Mills: At one time in his career, unbeaten Floyd Mayweather Jr. (39-0, 25 KOs) took on the best in each division he competed in. As a super featherweight, he defeated champion Genaro Hernandez. As a lightweight he defeated Jose Luis Castillo twice, and as a welterweight he defeated Zab Judah. It’s only recently, with his fights with Oscar De La Hoya and Ricky Hatton, that Mayweather has gone soft, taking on fighters that are not at the top of their class. In Hatton’s case, he was forced to fight out of his weight class – light welterweight – in order to fight Mayweather at welterweight.

As a result, Hatton looked like a Lilliputian next to Mayweather and lost badly in a 10th round TKO. As for De La Hoya, he’s been in a long career slide for the past five years prior to his fight with Mayweather in 2007, with De La Hoya winning two, losing two, with one of his wins by a dubious decision over Felix Sturm. No gave De La Hoya much of any chance at beating Mayweather, and he didn’t surprise anyone when he lost as expected he would. The fight was only as close as it was because Mayweather fought in strangely subdued manner, as if he was carrying De La Hoya in effort not to blow him out too easily.

One got the general impression that Mayweather could turn on the gas at any time and walk away with the right. This is in effect what Mayweather did in the final five rounds of the fight as he hit De La Hoya with shots from the outside whenever he pleased. The fight made millions for both fighters and I wasn’t the least surprised when an announcement was made a couple of months ago for a second fight between the two of them, even though the first fight was completely boring to even the biggest fans of the two fighters.

There seemed to be nor real reason for a second fight considering that De La Hoya would only be older, slower and less likely to be able to stay up with Mayweather like last time. However, with Mayweather only taking easy fights now, while avoiding real challenges like Miguel Cotto and Antonio Margarito, both of whom are the top welterweights in the division, it makes Mayweather look like he’s ducking them by not fighting either of them.

I could understand it, and forgive it if Mayweather were fighting other top fighters in the welterweight division, someone like Kermit Cintron or Andre Berto. However, he’s not; he’s fighting De La Hoya, who isn’t in my top five in either the super welterweight division or the welterweight division. Even worse, Mayweather hasn’t ruled out a second fight with Ricky Hatton, after Mayweather gets finished disposing of De La Hoya. A Hatton fight was even less of an appealing fight given the one-sided nature of their first fight.

Hatton simply didn’t match up at all and was getting beaten both on the inside and outside, with none of his usual grappling tricks working for him in the clinches. Against Kostya Tszyu, Hatton was able to use his ability to wrestle and muscle him around on the inside. However, in Mayweather’s case, he was naturally bigger and stronger than Hatton, so none of those tricks worked for Hatton and he soon found himself getting lit up with short punches on the inside. Nothing is likely to change in a second bout, because Hatton will remain the much smaller fighter and won’t be able to do much of anything to make the fight more competitive.

Mayweather doesn’t seem to care about fighting the best, as his main concern is fighting the most popular fighter with the least amount of trauma inflicted in the process. One can only hope that after beating De La Hoya and Hatton once again, that Mayweather will have gotten it out of his style and will finally wake up and fight Cotto or Berto.

If he doesn’t choose to do that, it will likely leave a bad impression of him in the boxing world, with many of his loyal fans turning away from him one by one. He can’t continue to fight Hatton and De La Hoya over and over again in perpetual fashion, for eventually that will wear thin with fans. For me, it already has.