Should Mayweather Be Getting More Credit?

By Boxing News - 04/03/2008 - Comments

By Eric Thomas: Last week, Pound for Pound boxing great Floyd Mayweather Jr. took part in a Wrestlemania match, walkng away with a cool twenty million dollars for little more than 10 minutes of work in a staged match. Mayweather, 30, has seemingly stepped away from boxing as far as taking on the elite in the division. That is, unless you consider the 35 year-old Oscar De La Hoya and Ricky Hatton as the elite in the welterweight divison. I know for some fans, they certainly don’t and would be hard pressed to find few others, outside of one of Hatton’s British fans or one of De La Hoya’ fans. These comments are generally given by most fans about Mayweather’s choice of opponents in the past year.

My question is, is Mayweather destroying his career by fighting only easy fights rather than the top fighters in the division? Mayweather doesn’t seem to have been hurt a bit for not having faced the top welterweights like Miguel Cotto, Kermit Cintron, Paul Williams, Carlos Quintana, Andre Berto or Antonio Margarito. I doubt it highly that any one of them would bring in the fans that Hatton or De La Hoya would on a given night. I’d go so far as to say that none of them probably never will be close to as popular as Hatton or De La Hoya.

So, pray tell, why should Mayweather waste his time fighting less popular fighters than him? Isn’t boxing, after all, entertainment just like any other sport. The object of the sport is to put backsides in the seats and regarless of whether or not some people agree with it or not, if it’s what the fans want to see, why should Mayweather lower his standards by fighting boxers that the public isn’t interested in seeing? Boxing as a sport is going through troubled times right now, as it’s having to compete with other sports like basketball and football, both of which get much more television time than boxing does.

Heck, even professional wrestling gets more television time, and has perhaps more fans than boxing. That’s not a good thing, believe me. Since the early 70s, boxing has been without a big star like Muhammed Ali who can carry the sport through these lean times. If Mayweather is the man who can do that, why are the biggest boxing fans constantly tearing how down and trying to demean him?

Mayweather should be given credit for seeing though and the mess, and understanding what’s truly important. I know for me, I see him as an ambassator for the sport, one that can perhaps bring it back to a semblance to what it once was. If Mayweather was to waste his time listening to some of the fans’ crazy ideas, he’d be wasting precious time fighting boxers that the world could care less about seeing.

In doing so, Mayweather would be lessening his own name and diminishing his star potential. So, I could care less how many times he fights De La Hoya and Hatton. If the punlic wants to see it., let them fight over and over again without stop, and bring back the fans to the sport.