By Chris Williams: Roger Mayweather, the uncle and trainer for unbeaten Floyd Mayweather Jr,, says he knew that WBC welterweight champion Victor Ortiz wouldn’t want to fight if he was pressured hard last Saturday night by Floyd Jr. in Las Vegas,. Nevada, and that’s exactly what happened.
Perhaps Roger saw evidence of Ortiz backing off in his other fights when pressured hard by Marcos Maidana and Lamont Peterson, and figured that was a trend that would continue if Mayweather Jr, put any kind of steady pressure on the young 24-year-old Ortiz.
Whatever the case, this is exactly what happened. Other than the first round where Mayweather Jr. let Ortiz be the aggressor, it was Mayweather who was pressing forward for the most part in rounds 2 through four until the fight was halted after Mayweather Jr. dropped Ortiz with a beautiful left-right combination to the head.
“I knew it was going to happen,” Roger said to examiner.com. “I knew that from the get go. I wasn’t worried about that. I told him ‘Keep walking to him, keep walking to him.’ That mother****** didn’t want to fight.”
It’s hard to disagree with that notion because Ortiz looked like he was running from Mayweather to keep from getting hit. It was the opposite of how Ortiz had predicted the fight would be during the run up to the bout on the HBO Mayweather-Ortiz 24/7 episodes.
Ortiz made it appear that he would stalk Mayweather Jr. around the ring and punish him. But as it turns out, Ortiz fought a lot like he did in the Peterson and Maidana fights when he became uncomfortable with the pressure that he was receiving.
Roger isn’t sure who Mayweather Jr. will be fighting next, but he did pretty much rule out Floyd fighting WBO welterweight champion Manny Pacquiao next, saying “I know he aint going to fight Pacquiao. So I don’t know who he’s going to fight.”
It’s pretty easy to understand why Mayweather Jr. won’t be fighting Pacquiao next. Mayweather Jr. wants Pacquiao to agree to take the USADA Olympic style random blood tests for performance enhancing drugs, but for him to do that he’ll have to keep his training camp in the United States the entire time and not split the camp by training the first half in the Philippines where the USADA can’t test him. Pacquiao and his promoter Bob Arum haven’t shown any interest in following Mayweather’s requests that Pacquiao stay in the U.S for the testing. Because of that the Mayweather-Pacquiao fight is a non-starter and likely won’t change in the future unless Pacquiao or Mayweather give in.
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