Mayweather vs. Marquez: Floyd Will Look Like an Old Man

By Boxing News - 09/10/2009 - Comments

may435344By Manuel Perez: With less than two weeks to go before the Floyd Mayweather vs. Juan Manuel Marquez fight takes place at the MGM Grand, in Las Vegas, Nevada, few boxing fans are giving Marquez must of any chance in this fight. It seems as if the fans are betting that Mayweather, now 32, will be the same fighter he was before he abruptly retired two long years ago after a win over Ricky Hatton.

What boxing fans are missing out on is that Mayweather has aged a great deal since his last fight two years ago, and the fighter that fought against Hatton and Oscar De La Hoya in 2007, does no longer exist. Age has changed Mayweather, made him slower, more average and brought him back down to the pack. At least that’s my belief in seeing how he looks now.

Mayweather is actually going to be turning 33 very shortly, and that may not sound like a big number for some of you, but for little fighters like Mayweather, that’s a lot of mileage. In car terms, a 33-year-old fighter the size of Mayweather is like a car with over 200,000 miles on it.

You might be able to stretch it out and get another 100,000 out of it, but more likely the car will need to have the engine and transmission replaced. With boxers, sadly, once the timing and reflexes are shot, that’s about it for them. They can hang on for awhile and continue to fight for a paycheck like many famous boxers sometimes do. However, by staying around past their prime, all they do is take a lot of punishment and end up losing a lot more than they ever did in their prime.

This is what I see about to happen with Mayweather. He may be facing an older fighter than him in 35-year-old Marquez, but Juan Manuel appears to be the younger fighter for some reason. Call it good genetics or maybe it has to do with Marquez staying busy for the past two years fighting top fighters like Joel Casamayor and Juan Diaz, while Mayweather was living it up with his cash.

Whatever it may be, I see Mayweather suffering his first loss of his career on September 19th, in a fight that may actually turn out to be more one-sided than anyone could ever have imagined. I see this as similar to when Sugar Ray Leonard tried to make yet another at age 35, and was badly defeated by Terry Norris in 1991. Mayweather is about the same age as Leonard was when he was humiliated by Norris, and like Leonard, Mayweather is coming off a two year retirement for his fight against Marquez.

There’s going to be a lesson here for Mayweather. 1. He should never have retired when he was at the top of his game. That was a bad mistake. 2. Mayweather should have fought someone a lot easier than Marquez for his tune-up bout. Marquez isn’t a fighter you use as a tune-up.

I know Mayweather is counting on his size advantage enabling him get past his rustiness, but Mayweather isn’t that much bigger than Marquez for him to be counting on being able to beat a fighter as talented as him. At the prime of Mayweather’s career, he was essentially fought to a stand still in two bouts with Jose Luis Castillo. Marquez is even better than Castillo.



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