By Jaime Ortega: Officially retired, Floyd Mayweather Jr. spoke his opinion on Keith Thurman Jr. versus Danny Garcia and took a few jabs at both fighters. “That fight should have not taken place now,” Mayweather said. “At my age, they still are no competition for me.”
There is no doubt Floyd is one of the most pure technically gifted boxers to ever lace a pair of gloves. Thurman at times acknowledges and praises Floyd for his prowess and the way he defeats his opponents. But Thurman has also openly spoken about the problem of the Floyd era and how it hurt boxing while he reigned supreme and undefeated.
In the past, Thurman accused Floyd of not taking his mandatories and ducking opponents. Thurman was Floyds WBA mandatory in 2015-16 and instead took on Andre Berto. Thurman recently stated that during the Floyd era, Floyd never became the undisputed unifying champion of the world – restating his initial point that Floyd picked and selected his opponents without following the conventional rules of boxing.
Personally, if Floyd publically implies Thurman is such an easy fight, I see no reason to believe why he shouldn’t make the fight happen sometime this year. I mean, if Floyd is so confident Thurman is such an easy pick, I don’t fully understand why he didn’t fight him as his WBA mandatory. Sugar Ray Robison, Henry Armstrong retired at an older age than Floyd, and defeated many young contenders during the end of their reigns to cement their legacy – the same is true with Bernard Hopkins who retired at age 51.
The Floyd era vanished, today the welterweight division is infested with undefeated talents and fierce competitors who want to make history in boxing. After Floyd retired, boxing was allowed once again to prosper — and as soon as 2016, fans watched the best fight the best. To some extent Floyd’s reign became the ‘dark age’ of boxing because it became all about who had the biggest PPV’s, and not who deserved the fight. Bob Arum is also responsible for the PPV madness, thus why most boxers are leaving Top Rank to sign for Al-Haymon – Yet, despite the PPV’s, Arum provided HBO costumers with decent fights. Oscar De La Hoya’s Golden Boy Promotions took the Floyd path, milking Canelo as much as he can before he takes on GGG.
Under Floyd’s era, Garcia versus Thurman, Brook versus Spence, Thurman versus Porter would have not taken place for years to come. Such great fights would have taken a long time to marinate, and many of the fighters would have become older, restricted to fight each other during their prime. The worst part is that Floyd would have never conceded to make such great fights to be broadcasted free on primetime CBS, and would have opted for PPV only. It took close to eight years for Pacquiao versus Floyd to finally materialize, and they were past their primes.
Floyd shoved Errol Spence Jr. down Thurman’s throat to avoid fighting his mandatory and instead focus his fan-base attention with the Andre Berto fight. Many Floyd fans took the bait, and wrongfully accused Thurman of ducking Spence, but gave a pass to Mayweather ducking Thurman. The excuse was Thurman didn’t bring enough PPV’s to fight Floyd, and he wasn’t at his level. Now that Thurman is the
A-side they accuse him of ducking Errol – when he is not even his mandatory or holds a belt — but they were okay with Floyd ducking Thurman when he was his mandatory for over a year.
Floyd needs to take Thurman out his vocabulary. Floyd has retired and is no longer relevant to the welterweight division. In fact, most people don’t miss his egocentric personality nor his style of fighting. If anything Floyd should be happy fans can watch the best fights take place for free. Every time Floyd is asked about other fighters, he never talks about them, instead he talks about himself and all his achievements.
Thurman on the other hand is the people’s champ. He is what boxing desperately needed, he adheres the mentality of old school boxers in his willingness to create legacy over money. He took on Chaves, Garcia and Porter on their primes and beat them. Thurman and Garcia could had acted greedy toward the fans and reject fighting in primetime television and fight in PPV instead – they could have copied Floyd only thinking about themselves– but they didn’t, so I don’t understand why Floyd is not happy big fights are finally taking place, since it is what fans ultimately want and the sport of boxing needs.
Thurman has earned the respect of many fans, and he will fight the winner of Brook versus Spence very soon; he won’t make boxing fans wait 8 years, hoping the winner grows old and slows down. Thurman has the opportunity to become undisputed soon, an achievement not seeing for a few decades hostage to Floyd’s era. Thurman’s era is way more competitive than Floyd’s era, and they’re all sorts of sharks swimming in the division – many undefeated. Whomever comes victorious out of this era, will surely rank higher as an All of Famer, more than anyone in the past 30 years. It will be very hard for anyone to remain undefeated in this era.
Floyd has openly said that even today at his age, no welterweight is on his class. So the best way to prove his point would be for Floyd to surpass Rocky Marciano’s record, and Ricardo Lopez with two more victories against elite welters to shut everyone up. But as everyone should know, they’re no easy fights anymore for any of the top welters, and this generation is more stylistically diverse than during the welterweight era of Floyd – mostly brawlers.