Guerrero too slow to compete against Mayweather

By Boxing News - 05/05/2013 - Comments

floyd#10By Scott Gilfoid: Last night’s fight between Floyd Mayweather Jr. (44-0, 26 KO’s) and Robert “The Ghost” Guerrero (31-2-1, 18 KO’s) at the MGM Grand, in Las Vegas, Nevada, was kind of a letdown for many boxing fans due to Floyd’s complete mastery of the much slower and limited Guerrero.

Mayweather won the fight by a lopsided 12 round unanimous decision in a fight that was scored much closer than it should have been. The judges appeared to give Guerrero some mercy rounds in scoring it 117-111, 117-111, and 117-111.

Believe me, Guerrero didn’t fight well enough to have the fight scored that closely because he was just awful throughout. First off, Guerrero was too slow to compete. His hand speed was glacial, and he looked like some 2nd tier fighter that had stumbled into the wrong ring by mistake.

It was bad for boxing fans because they started booing the non-action as early as mid-fight. Guerrero looked like he lost his initiative early on after tasting some fast, hard right hands.

After that, Guerrero didn’t want to press the fight like he had in wins over the limited Andre Berto and Selcuk Aydin. Guerrero pressured those guys constantly, but against Mayweather, Guerrero frequently stood in front of him waiting too long before throwing his punches.

He was afraid to get countered and wasn’t willing to walk through the shots that he needed to in order to land his punches. Miguel Cotto was brave enough to walk though those shots, but Guerrero didn’t want any part of it and he made the fight a real stinker to watch.

Mayweather landed 153 of 254 punches last night for a 60 percent connect percentage. For his part, Guerrero landed only 113 of 581 punches for a 19 percent connect percentage. That’s awful. Guerrero couldn’t do what Cotto did because he didn’t have the power, didn’t have the jab, and didn’t have a clue how to fight Mayweather.

Mayweather said after the fight: “I tried for the knockout but I hurt my right hand midway through the fight.”

Guerrero said “He’s slick, he’s quick and he’s better than I thought.”

Guerrero looked desperate in the last three rounds of the fight, as he charged forward constantly like a skinny bull with a billy goat’s gruff on his chin, but it was useless. He was just too damn slow and so awful to look at. I still can’t believe this fight was made. Mayweather really cherry picked this opponent because this fight wasn’t even worth watching, and the boos from the crowd seemed to echo that opinion.

If Mayweather is only going to fight five more times on his Showtime/CBS contract, he’s got to fight better guys than this because he’s going to lose fans if he keeps picking out stiffs without hand speed and who don’t belong in the ring with him.



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