By Dave Lahr: Unbeaten welterweight Floyd Mayweather Jr. (39-0, 25 KO’s) has reportedly pulled out of his previously scheduled July 18th bout against Juan Manuel Marquez at the MGM Grand, in Las Vegas, Nevada. Mayweather Jr., now 32, injured one of his ribs while training for his fight against the 35-year-old Marquez. As of now, it’s unknown when Mayweather will be able to get back to training.
However, Marquez will continue with his own training for the bout and will continue his focus on their future fight. The injury came to no surprise to me, because Mayweather hasn’t seen action for close to two years since beating Ricky Hatton by a 10th round TKO in December 2007.
Mayweather has been taking it easy since then spending millions and living the soft life. I’m frankly surprised that Mayweather made it this far without experiencing a blowout of one body part or another. The problem is when you get a fighter that is getting up there in age and who has been out of the ring for as long as Mayweather, injures are bound to happen.
The postponement is bad news for the boxing world, because many fans were looking forward to the Mayweather-Marquez fight next month and were wanting to see what Mayweather has left after his two years away from the sport.
Mayweather is taking an usual course with his boxing comeback. Instead of taking a two or three tune-ups against soft opposition, Mayweather instead has chosen to fight a smaller fighter in Marquez, who is considered to be one of the best fighters in the lightweight division if not the best.
Mayweather has a considerable size advantage over Marquez and has taken some criticism for his choice of opponent. However, it makes sense for Mayweather, because he’s coming back with the plan on trying to get a shot against Manny Pacquiao, a fighter that is roughly the same size as Marquez.
Coincidentally, Pacquiao has fought Marquez twice and has had serious problems against him both times, winning some rounds by knocking Marquez down multiple times, but losing virtually all the other rounds that didn’t have knockdowns in them. By beating Marquez, Mayweather would in a sense be showing that he’s superior to Pacquiao, since Manny was dominated by Marquez much of the time in their two fights.
Mayweather didn’t want to go right after Pacquiao for some reason, saying that he decided to fight Marquez because he called him out. It doesn’t sound like a very good reason, though, because pretty much every fighter in boxing would like to get a shot at fighting Mayweather, including Pacquiao, yet Mayweather opted to fight Marquez instead of any of them.
The postponement may end up hurting Mayweather more than he might realize it at this time. Pacquiao was waiting on seeing him fight to determine whether to fight him next or to move on to another opponent. Now with Mayweather’s bout being cancelled for the time being, Pacquiao will likely move on to a fight with Miguel Cotto, who looked bad in beating Joshua Clottey on Saturday night.
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