By Manuel Perez: Not too long ago, Floyd Mayweather announced that he retiring from boxing and saying that it was a permanent deal, that he wouldn’t be coming back because he had lost the love for the sport. I, for one, am hoping that Mayweather is good for his word and decides to stay away from boxing, because he’s basically stopped performing competitively years ago, perhaps all the way back to his second fight with Jose Luis Castillo in December 2002. That was his last meaningful, the last time that he fought someone that he wasn’t predicted ahead of time to beat by a landslide.
As it turns out, it was a fight that he didn’t even appear to win, nor had he seemed to have one the previous fight with Castillo earlier in the year, in April 2002. Both fights were narrow decisions, but naturally, Mayweather got the nod due to his big name. That, in a sense, was the last real fight for Mayweather as far as I’m concerned. After that, Mayweather went after strictly easy opponents, the type that he – or any other good fighter – could expect to beat without too much trouble. Among his wins were fighters such as Victoriano Sosa, Phillip N’dou, DeMarcus Corley, Henry Bruseles, Arturo Gatti, Sharmba Mitchell, Zab Judah, Carlos Baldomir, Oscar De La Hoya and finally Ricky Hatton. Do you get the picture?
This list of fighters dates back all the way back to 2003, and basically none of them are the top cream of the division, certainly not Hatton or De La Hoya. What we’ve been seeing from Mayweather has been more exhibition bouts than authentic championship bouts. He’s not had to face the best fighters, like Miguel Cotto, Paul Williams, Kostya Tszyu, or Antonio Margarito. Instead, we the boxing public, have been forced to watch the fights that the network television have force fed, these improbable match ups with Mayweather getting one soft opponent after another, all so that he could remain unbeaten and not have his brains knocked about too badly in the process.
The fact that Mayweather has chosen this time, a time in which Cotto, Margarito and Williams are literally breathing down his neck and can no longer be ignored, is rather telling if you ask me. The fact is, Mayweather can’t continue to avoid these fighters, mainly because the boxing public won’t stomach watching him fight De La Hoya or Hatton for a second time, when it was joke to begin. I’m really hoping that Mayweather stays away from boxing and makes good his retirement from boxing. We need our champions to not avoid the best fighters in the sport, because it’s these joke fights against set up fighters that is killing the sport.
The top fighters, whoever it is, needs to be unafraid and willing to fight other top fighters and not looking to get the easiest fight available to them. I once was a big fan of Mayweather, but I stopped being a fan in 2003, when I saw that he had started a trend where he was no longer fighting the top fighters in the division. I can’t understand why he was doing this, other than he maybe he had lost interest in taking risky fights against the best. Whatever the case, I tuned him out and focused more on more legitimate fighters in the lower weight classes, like Ivan Calderon, who weren’t afraid to fight the best.
Now, I don’t expect Mayweather’s retirement to last long, because he’s said it himself – he’s a businessman. And, with that self proclaimed title, it won’t be long before he realizes that he’s spending money at an alarming rate and without new money coming in to replace it. Once that happens, we’ll see him coming back in a heartbeat, unfortunately against someone he knows he can beat, like Hatton or Pacquiao.
Heck, Mayweather would probably be successful at dragging De La Hoya back from his soon to be retirement. Then, we can all sit back and watch more stomach turning fights from him that we’ve been forced to swallow for the past five years. I hope he stays retired for as long as possible, so that once he does come back, fighters like De La Hoya, Hatton and the other cast of characters are all retired from the sport. He’s then be forced to fight a younger fighter, who will likely take advantage of his rusty skills and give him a sound beating. Now that I wouldn’t mind seeing.
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