By Jim Slattengren: After a brief two year retirement, Floyd Mayweather Jr. will be returning on July 18th against Juan Manuel Marquez in a setup fight for a possible fight in 2010 against Manny Pacquiao. Since Mayweather Jr. has little interest in fighting opponents in his own weight division (welterweight, and instead has been seeking smaller fighters like Ricky Hatton and older ones like Oscar De La Hoya, would it be fair to say that Mayweather is a bad thing for boxing?
There are two sides to the argument, however. There are Mayweather fans that love his hit and run style of fighting, and don’t mind watching him fight opponents one to two divisions smaller than him like Hatton and Marquez.
For them, it doesn’t matter if Mayweather ever fights in his own weight division or not, just as long as he fights big named opponents. These fans could careless that Mayweather appears to be selecting opponents that are either too small or two old, thus almost guaranteeing that he’ll come out on top.
Instead of seeing it as unfair and unsportsmanlike to select mismatches like this, Mayweather fans love him just for seeking out a big named fighter, period. It’s like having Wladimir Klitschko, the IBF/WBO heavyweight champion, looking two divisions down at International Boxing Federation light heavyweight champion Chad Dawson and deciding he’s a great opponent to fight.
To be sure, Dawson would be able to stick around for a little while due to his hand speed and good defensive skills, but sooner or later Wladimir would drop the bomb on Dawson and take him out with a big hand or a left hook.
Maybe Wladimir’s fans would love the fight, because after all, Dawson is a fairly popular fighter and it would almost a near certain win for Wladimir.
Casual boxing fans, ignorant of most fighters, would think, ‘gee, great fight. This white sure is good. Look at how he’s beating up the smaller fighter.’ It roughly comes out to that exact thing, because Mayweather will be fighting Marquez, a lightweight.
Indeed, Marquez is even small for lightweight standards and only recently moved up to the lightweight division from the super featherweight class. That’s even worse. Can you imagine a super middleweight like Mikkel Kessler or Lucian Bute fighting Wladimir?
Who cares about their technical boxing skills, because in a matter of minutes, Wladimir would connect with a big shot and take them out no matter how many jabs they threw or how much running they did. This is why I think it’s so wrong that Mayweather chooses to pick fighters at random to fit his idea of a good payday without the trouble that goes with it.
Right now, Mayweather could make a bundle if he went after welterweights Paul Williams and Miguel Cotto. Will Mayweather fight them? Heck no! He’d take a lot of punishment from either of them, and wouldn’t have the size or youth advantage against them like he did against Hatton and De La Hoya.
For boxing fans that enjoy to see competitive fights against fighters in the same weight division, they don’t like what Mayweather has done and is planning to do in the future by picking Marquez and then Manny Pacquiao to fight.
They see it as grossly unfair for fighter the size of Mayweather to be fighting Pacquiao and Marquez, both of whom were super featherweights only a short while ago.
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