By Jim Dower: With little over a month to go before the September 19th fight between Floyd “Money” Mayweather and Juan Manuel Marquez, the bout is attracting little attention and rarely discussed at all on the internet. It’s as if the fight isn’t even taking place, because there is barely a peep being mentioned about the fight. That’s not a good sign for Mayweather, because the bout will be pay-per-view and will be competing with the UFC 103 event, which takes place on the same night for a lot less money.
It seems Mayweather Jr. may have overestimated his worth based on his past fights against Ricky Hatton and Oscar De La Hoya. Back then, it was thought by some boxing fans that Mayweather was the reason why those fights ended up so successful. However, that may not be the case. If the little attention that the Marquez fight is any indication, it could be that Hatton and De La Hoya were the main reasons those fights turned out to be mega bouts, and not because of Mayweather.
Certainly, Mayweather wasn’t a huge draw before the De La Hoya fight in 2007. Back then, Mayweather’s fights against Zab Judah were respectable but not even close to being huge. It wasn’t until Mayweather was matched with De La Hoya and Hatton that Mayweather was able to be in a fight that brought in huge numbers.
Mayweather seemed to be on the way to building up a fan base with his fights against Hatton and De La Hoya, and probably he’d be a huge bonafide star by now if he had stuck around and not retired. However, the two year retirement set Mayweather back in a big way, taking away a lot of his fans and leading to Manny Pacquiao becoming a huge star.
Now, Mayweather is finding out the hard way that he’s going to have to start from scratch if he wants to win back the boxing fans that he lost. All the talking that Mayweather has one lately in the media won’t be enough on it’s own to bring in the fans, because it takes a little more than that to get the attention of boxing fans nowadays.
Fans have had a huge dose of bragging and trash talking by British heavyweight David Haye, who then did nothing to back up his words in the ring by backing out on two consecutive fights with the Klitschko brothers. It’s probably not possible for the Mayweather-Marquez fight to interest fans, because of Mayweather’s inactivity and the history of him being less than fan friendly in many of his fights.
With his hit and run style of fighting, Mayweather is the opposite of what many boxing fans are looking for when they lay down their hard earned money to watch a fight. The Marquez honestly shouldn’t even be a pay-per-view fight at this point.
Mayweather is coming out of a two year retirement, and will likely be rusty from inaction. To top it off, Mayweather has selected a fighter that fights two weight classes below him in lightweight Marquez. That makes Mayweather look like a cherry picking bully to many boxing fans. There’s no interest in seeing Mayweather fight someone two divisions below him.
Marquez may be a better fighter than Mayweather if the size disparity were removed, but the fact remains, Mayweather is the bigger fighter and will likely be able to win because of that alone. That isn’t the recipe that Mayweather should have been looking for in his comeback. He needed to fight a welterweight like Miguel Cotto, Shane Mosley or someone like Paul Williams.
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