By Matt Stein: With his two years away from boxing, former pound-for-pound number #1 boxer Floyd Mayweather Jr’s career has dimmed somewhat in the eyes of many fans. Mayweather, now 32, is hoping he can recapture the fans that he lost with his time off from boxing by fighting Juan Manuel Marquez on September 19th. Thus far, most people are betting that Mayweather will still have enough left in the tank to beat Marquez, 35, simply because of Mayweather’s bigger size.
However, what people seem to be missing is that Mayweather is only one inch taller than Marquez at 5’8”, and won’t have enough of a size advantage for it to matter much. Mayweather will have a considerable reach advantage of five inches at 72’ compared to the 67” Marquez. However, that likely won’t be much of a factor either because Mayweather prefers to fight at medium range, staying close to his opponents where Mayweather likes to block punches and fire back counter shots.
This is where Mayweather will be making a mistake. Because Marquez is also a counter puncher and will be answering Mayweather’s shots with punches of his own, making Mayweather pay each time he throws one of his short pot shots.
Mayweather has always had problems taking shots to the body, and recently he suffered a rib injury while training for this fight. Although the injury has since healed, you can count on Marquez, an excellent body puncher, aiming his shots in that direction to try and take advantage of Mayweather’s recent injury. If it hasn’t healed properly or if he’s unable to take the heavy body shots, we may see Mayweather fold early and either lose energy or possibly get stopped.
In the past, Mayweather hasn’t fought anyone close to being as skilled technically and as tough as Marquez. Granted, Mayweather has fought Oscar De La Hoya, Ricky Hatton and Zab Judah in the past three years, but none of those fighters are in the same league as Marquez is. De La Hoya was a good – not great – fighter at one point in his long career, but by the time that Mayweather fought De La Hoya, Oscar had lost two out of his last four fights and was on the serious decline.
Mayweather’s other wins in the past four years, victories over Henry Bruseles, Arturo Gatti, Sharmba Mitchell and Carlos Baldomir, have come against fighters not in the same class as Marquez in terms of boxing skills and raw ability.
As such, Mayweather will be take a dramatic step up in competition at a point where he’s rusty from inactivity. Mayweather has been sitting around spending his millions in the past two years, not seriously training, whereas Marquez has stayed busy fighting Manny Pacquiao, Joel Casamayor and Juan Diaz. Marquez beat Casamayor and Diaz, and lost a controversial 12 round split decision to Pacquiao.
That’s not a good news for Mayweather, because if Marquez is good enough to have beaten Pacquiao, the fighter that some peg as being the best in boxing, then Mayweather will be asking a lot of himself to beat a fighter with that much ability coming off a two year retirement.
Marquez isn’t the kind of fighter that is used as a tune-up, and it looks as if Mayweather has greatly underestimated Marquez’s ability. Mayweather could be fooled by his own performances in the past in beating fighters in the lighter weight classes. Mayweather dominant at 135, but he’s much more beatable now that he’s moved up in weight. But now with inactivity and increased age, I think Mayweather is ripe for the pickings.
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