Malignaggi: Mayweather is the best fighter of this generation

By Boxing News - 04/16/2016 - Comments

Floyd MayweatherBy Chris Williams: Paulie Malignaggi disagrees with HBO’s Max Kellerman in his opinion about Manny Pacquiao being the top fighter of this era. Malignaggi sees the top fighter being Floyd Mayweather Jr. If there’s any question about who the best fighter was during this era, Malignaggi says for the boxing fans to go back and re-watch the Mayweather-Pacquiao fight from last May and note how one-sided the fight was in Mayweather’s favor.

Pacquiao lost that fight by a 12 round decision in a fairly one-sided fight. Pacquiao and many of his fans believe that he should have been given the decision in the contest despite the fact that he was fighting with just one good arm due to him having suffered a torn right rotator cuff before the fight.

It’s difficult to imagine what Kellerman was thinking when he made the claim that Pacquiao is the best fighter of this era. How can he be the best in this era with all the defeats that he has on his resume during the era. It seems to me that the best fighter of the era should be someone who is undefeated like Mayweather rather than someone who was beaten over and over again by the likes of Juan Manuel Marquez, Tim Bradley and Mayweather.

Pacquiao’s trainer Freddie Roach says he thinks the outcome would have been different if Pacquiao had been healthy. Whatever the case, you have to blame Pacquiao for going into the fight with an injured shoulder. He could have postponed the fight and saved the boxing fans a lot of money and disappointment. When you go into a contest without having prepared correctly, then you deserve to lose. It’s that way in school. If you were too sick to study for your tests, you can’t make excuses afterwards. You were the one that messed up.

“I think that opinion is ridiculous,” Malignaggi said to Fighthype about Kellerman saying Pacquiao is the best fighter of this era. “I don’t think it’s comparable. I think when you saw them in the ring with each other, you saw how ridiculous that opinion can be because it looked like two different levels of fighters in there when they fought each other. I think it speaks for itself. You judge them by what they accomplished, and the way they looked. Floyd ticks all the boxes, and has the advantage in all the areas. When they fought head to head, you saw how they matched up. It wasn’t even close. It looked like two different fighters at two different levels. It looked like they didn’t even compete in the same sport. If you watched the fight, one guy didn’t even look like a fighter that night. One guy looked like he was several classes above the other guy. I think it’s pretty clear that Floyd is the best fighter in this generation. He’s been head and shoulders above everyone else. I think the Mayweather era has been dominated by Floyd Mayweather. He [Pacquiao] is definitely not on the level of Floyd, and neither is nobody else,” said Malignaggi.

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Malignaggi does rate Pacquiao as a good fighter. He just doesn’t rate him as highly as Mayweather, and that makes a great deal of sense. You can’t compare Pacquiao to a fighter as talented as Mayweather. If you look at Pacquiao’s resume, you see all the catch-weight fights he had against various opponents in which he needed a handicap in order to fight these guys. Those fights are tainted in my mind because when you get a handicap, there should be either an asterisk next to your name or the win shouldn’t count. How would you like if it the fences were moved in during Roger Maris’ 61-home run season in which he broke Babe Ruth’s single season home run mark of 60 in 1961. Pacquiao did win world titles in eight divisions, but he wasn’t always fighting the best guys in each of those divisions. Pacquiao was fighting in the divisions long enough for him to win a world title, and then he would move up to the next division. If Mayweather wanted to do something like that, I think he could have done the exact same thing with no problems. If the idea is just to fight whichever paper champion you can get to fight you, then winning world titles in many different weight classes is easy work.