Mayweather talks about the ups and downs in boxing

By Boxing News - 04/08/2014 - Comments

By Chris Williams: Floyd Mayweather Jr. (45-0, 26 KO’s) has yet to experience a down period in his highly accomplished career, and he plans on continuing to have nothing but up experiences for the remainder of his career. Mayweather fights WBA welterweight champion Marcos Maidana (35-3, 31 KO’s) in exactly 25 days when these two warriors enter the ring on May 3rd at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Mayweather says “There’s ups and downs with boxing, layoffs are part of the sport and they can either help or hurt a guy.”

The layoffs that Mayweather has had during his career has been the type that helped him, because it gave him time to let his hands heal to get him ready for important clashes such as his fight against Juan Manuel Marquez. Even Manny Pacquiao was seemingly helped by being out of the ring for 11 months following his knockout loss to Juan Manuel Marquez in 2012.

Pacquiao came back last November in easily beat Brandon Rios. To be sure, Pacquiao wasn’t fighting someone actually good like Marquez, so we’re not really sure whether the time off helped or hurt him. With Mayweather, it definitely helped him. Former heavyweight champion George Foreman was one of the fighters that it helped in being out of the ring for a long period of time. He took a 10 year break and was able to come back and win a world title in his 40s. Winky Wright was one of the fighters who was hurt by being out of the ring for a long period of time. He was out of the ring from 2007 to 2009, and when he returned, he was beaten by Paul Williams. Wright then took another three years off from 2009 to 2012 and was beaten by Peter Quillin.

Mayweather is truly gifted, and it doesn’t matter how much time he takes off from the sport. He’s someone that can come back and perform like he was never away from sport even for a moment. Granted, he’s at the point where he doesn’t have the time to be taking anymore long layoffs, but the time that he has taken off has been beneficial to him.

Maidana is in trouble on May 3rd. He’s going to have to come up with some strategy for him to compete in this fight, because Mayweather is going to do a job on him if he’s not 100% ready for the fight in terms of a plan A through Plan Z. Maidana is going to need multiple plans, and he’ll need to be ready to take a lot of shots because he’s going to be getting hit a lot in this fight unless he plays it safe. We saw Robert “The Ghost” Guerrero back off when he tasted some of Mayweather’s power in their fight last year. Guerrero talked a lot of trash about how he was going to take the fight to Mayweather, but as soon as he got hit, he turned his strategy around to play it safe instead of wading in.



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