By Simon Sheppard: Every physical and athletic endeavor is a mental endeavor. Boxing is no exception. As a matter of fact, with a boxer’s offense, defense and strategy, boxing is a kind of a physical chess game. Floyd Mayweather Jr. will be battling Manny Pacquiao tonight in their huge pay-per-view fight on HBO/Showtime at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nevada.
In his last fight with Marcos Maidana, Floyd said – “I need to make a statement”. But with this fight, the biggest of his career, in all this time, nowhere can we see the Floyd of old. Where is that rock-solid confidence?
Floyd is so evidently out of character. It seems so surreal. The blustering, brash, flamboyant and outspoken Floyd Joy Mayweather Junior is not there. I can even see that he goes out of his way to please Pacquiao and is trying so hard not to disrespect him. What happened?
In his past fights, when asked about a prediction on the outcome of each fight, he always had an unwavering, no-mincing-of-words, matter-of-fact-answer. As if his win was already a given. His answer makes it clear to whoever was asking that there is no other outcome but him beating any opponent he was facing at the time.
Skip Bayless from ESPN said “Floyd was *shamed* into accepting this fight”. Roach said, “for the first time, Floyd is in a fight he doesn’t want”
I’m worried about Floyd, all the indications seem to point to the truth in those statements. When we hear Floyd saying that “he doesn’t enjoy any of it anymore”, when we hear “no zero is not going to feed my daughter”, when Floyd says, it’s getting harder to go the gym” and when he states “no single fight is gonna define my legacy”, then I clearly see a man resigned to his fate.
Like I said, boxing is a a physical chess game, it’s mental as well as a physical endeavor. When a fighter has such a mental state as Floyd has now, any amount of skill or talent is basically useless when the mind and the heart are not into it.
In his mind it seems like Floyd has already accepted the 47-1, what he worries about is if he’s going to get seriously hurt in the process.
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