By Jason Kim: Recently, I was kind of stunned to see Floyd Mayweather Jr. (39-0, 25 KOs) trying to argue his case as to why he should still be the number #1 pound-for-pound boxing star in the sport despite having been out of the sport for two years. Mayweather, 32, was coming at it from the angle that he hadn’t been beaten so therefore he should still be the number #1 star in boxing.
I could see what Mayweather’s talking about, but his logic seems more than little faulty. If a fighter is allowed to take extensive amounts of time away from the sport and still consider themselves the top dog when they come back, how does that square with the fighters that have continued fighting during this time and more or less taken over where Mayweather left off.
You would think that a fighter that takes as much as two or more years off would have lost a certain amount of their ability through inactivity and the natural process of aging that goes. For a fighter like Mayweather to come back and just assume that he’s going to be recognized still as the number #1 star seems misguided because of how much a fighter typically loses of their ability when they take that much time off.
It’s like a heavyweight champion retiring for two years and still considering himself the champion even though another fighter has taken his place and won his title. The former heavyweight champion might want to consider himself as still the champion but that doesn’t mean the world does.
Most of the time when a fighter takes as much as two years off, they’re not nearly as good as they were before they left. Vitali Klitschko, who took four years off before coming back last year to recapture the WBC heavyweight title with a win over Samuel Peter, is a rare exception to the rule.
However, most of the time a fighter loses a lot when they take that kind of time off. This is why they fight a certain amount of tune-ups before they begin to start taking on better fighters. Mayweather isn’t interested in taking tune-up fights, although by choosing the much smaller Juan Manuel Marquez Floyd could technically be using him as a tune-up due to Juan’s smaller size.
Mayweather is also a fighter with a huge ego and those types of boxers often overestimate they’re ability and end up getting battered at some point in their careers. This may happen with Mayweather, because he still appears to be thinking he’s the same fighter he was when he stopped fighting in 2007 after his win over Ricky Hatton.
I expect Marquez to give Mayweather a lot of problems and make him look like a fighter that has been out of boxing for two years. However, I still think that Mayweather will win because of his bigger size which should help him when he starts to take a lot of hits.
Mayweather is used to fighting much bigger fighters than Marquez and probably won’t be bothered by his shots. If the fight is anywhere near being close then you can expect that Mayweather, boxing’s “Cash Cow”, will get the decision by the judges. No way will Marquez get the nod if it’s close, because he’s not as popular a fighter as Mayweather.
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