Mayweather vs. Guerrero: Floyd was master class

By Boxing News - 05/09/2013 - Comments

floyd#44By Mark Calooke: This weekend fans witnessed another master class when Floyd Mayweather Jr. made his long awaited comeback against Robert Guerrero. Like expected, Guerrero started fast but was eventually overwhelmed by the P4P superstar.

In Britain, BoxNation had exclusive rights to air the event. I spend a lot of time around boxing people and inside gyms. And people are not happy. I have heard people saying they will cancel the channel, watch future shows on mute and only watch boxing on sky sports 1.

The general feeling is that people were looking forward to seeing Floyd Mayweather but the experience was ruined by the commentators. People have correctly pointed out that Mayweather was being praised for ‘incredible’ punches that in fact missed. And ‘genius’ moves that were fairly basic. At one point Mayweather simply turned around and was praised for a ‘beautiful spin’. Guerrero was getting very little praise for his work. Which I can understand has coursed offense.

BoxNation is one of the best channels for banning biased talk in my opinion. Yes, they messed up with this event. But they don’t mess up often. The channel is only £10 and you get alot of boxing for that. In fact you can watch boxing every night and get everyone from Pacquiao to Mayweather. I think the show presented by Steve Bunce is worth the money. whenever I have thought something bad about the show it always involves the commentary. But every boxing broadcaster has that.

One fan complained on Facebook and received this reply, ‘Firstly, I think our commentators did a great job and trust me when I say that commenting on live sports can be difficult – you have to call everything as you see it, and don’t necessarily have the luxury of replays or multiple angles like TV viewers do.

Secondly, Mayweather landed 60% of his power punches, which are the ones that would normally attract praise, so I would have to question how many times Floyd would have been praised for missing shots.

Mayweather unquestionably put on a master class on Saturday night, and we were privileged to bring you the generation’s best fighter LIVE and EXCLUSIVE on BoxNation.’

I don’t think they truly feel the commentators did a good job. But I agree that their job doesn’t come with the same advantages that viewers have. Due to line of sight issues, sometimes a punch can appear to land based on the sound. The same sound can come from glove on glove impact. Yes, Mayweather was exceptionally accurate as they point out. And power shots do generally gain praise.

However, people should be praised when its due. And whilst power shots should be praised, missed shots shouldn’t. They can question how many times it happened. Not as much as the fans are saying. But it happened a
lot.

Personally I don’t see why people are so upset. I found the commentary fairly comical. They were huge Mayweather fans which made them biased. Who isn’t guilty of that? Yes they went over the top. It didn’t make the show better, but it didn’t ruin it.

Canceling BoxNation isn’t a option in my eyes. Where else in the world can you get that amount of boxing for that price. I don’t think I will watch another show that has Barry Jones commentating. However, I have a feeling it was a one off and he was excited. Sadly his excitement damaged the networks income. For the record I have witnessed his commentary before and had no problems with it.



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