(Photo credit: Idris Erba/Mayweather Promotions) By Chris Williams: Floyd Mayweather Jr (46-0, 26 KOs) will be looking to cut his critics and haters down to size on September 13th when he defends his WBA and WBC welterweight titles against challenger Marcos Maidana (35-4, 31 KOs).
Mayweather feels that he’s in a situation where he won’t get any credit no matter how badly he whips Maidana in front of the entire world on Showtime pay-per-view, because fans will come in afterwards and discredit him or his opponent in some way rather than giving him his props for a job well done. But Mayweather is used to it because it’s been that way for so long now with fans saying this opponents were inferior or over the hill at the time he fought them.
“My back is always against the ropes no matter how it plays out in the sport of boxing,” Mayweather said. “If I dominate a guy they say he’s over the hill. If I don’t knock a guy out they say he’s slow. I’m not just fighting my opponent, I’m fighting the world – the media, the critics, the haters. But it comes with the territory.”
Mayweather is finding himself now in same situation where the great Muhammad Ali was at during his prime years. There were fans that couldn’t give Ali credit during much of his career, and it was only after he was gone that he was fully recognized by these fans.
“This is my era and I just might be another level,” Mayweather said.
The only thing that Mayweather can do is to go out and give it his best each time, and eventually he’ll win over the haters and critics that have been slow in recognizing his talent. If Mayweather can soundly beat Maidana this time instead of giving him rounds like he did last May, then it’s going to make people realize that Mayweather was being straight up truthful when he said that he was giving fans a gift by electing to trade with Maidana.
Many fans don’t believe that Mayweather intentionally made it easy for Maidana by choosing to slug with him. They think that Mayweather had no other choice but to trade due to the pressure that Maidana put on him in the fight. But if you look at how Mayweather fought Saul “Canelo” Alvarez and Robert “The Ghost” Guerrero in his two fights before the Maidana bout, you can see that Mayweather moved around the ring effortlessly and didn’t fight with his back against the ropes for prolonged periods of time like he did in the Maidana fight. That right there gives you a pretty good idea that Mayweather intentionally slugged with him in that fight.
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