By William Mackay: Undefeated Floyd Mayweather Jr. (39-0, 25 KO’s) is feeling a lot of pressure on himself to extend his unbeaten by beating lightweight Juan Manuel Marquez (50-4-1, 37 KO’s) on September 19th when they face off. Mayweather, 32, like many unbeaten fighters, badly wants to keep his fight record flawless by beating the 36-year-old Marquez.
Mayweather sees it as ultimately important for his boxing legacy, because future historians will judge how good he is by his undefeated record. However, what Mayweather seems to be losing track of when focusing on his pumped up record is that his record won’t mean as much unless he fights the best fighters in his own weight class and not smaller fighters like Marquez, Manny Pacquiao and Ricky Hatton.
Mayweather is winning fights, but he’s hand picking smaller fighters to make that happen. Perhaps Mayweather is good enough to beat fighters in his own weight class, the welterweight division, but since Mayweather hasn’t been fighting anyone at his own weight class in quite some time, you can’t give him much credit.
If Mayweather were to retire after beating Marquez, an argument could be made that an asterisk should be applied after all of his bouts following 2002, which was essentially the end of Mayweather fighting the very top of his division. The only exception since then was a fight against Carlos Baldomir and Zab Judah in 2006.
However, Judah was a small welterweight and fighting out of his own weight class, the light welterweight division. Baldomir won the WBC welterweight title after being Judah, but Baldomir hardly belonged as a champion and clearly wasn’t destined to hold his title for more than a fight or two.
I personally didn’t consider either Judah or Baldomir as top welterweights at the time that Mayweather fought them. Now if Mayweather had fought Paul Williams, Miguel Cotto, Antonio Margarito, Shane Mosley and Kermit Cintron, then I would have been saying something about Mayweather because those fighters were five of the best welterweights in the division in 2006.
Mayweather would have had huge problems against any one of them and I couldn’t see him beating Williams, Margarito or Mosley. Mayweather might have been able to beat Cotto if he fought incredibly hard and was willing to take a lot of punishment. Mayweather wouldn’t have been able to beat Cotto by running or using his check left hook like he did against Ricky Hatton.
I would have taken a lot more for Mayweather to beat Cotto, and I don’t know that Mayweather would be willing to make the sacrifice to get the win. Instead of facing those top welterweights, Mayweather chose the limited Baldomir, the small and weak Judah, an older Oscar De La Hoya and then finally Hatton, a light welterweight.
All of those bouts were essentially safe fights for Mayweather, opponents too small, too weak, too old or just too crappy. For that reason, whether Mayweather retires after beating Marquez and Manny Pacquiao, Mayweather’s record would be tainted in my eyes, because his wins in the past four years have come against less than the very best fighters in his own weight class. It’s not sporting to take on fighters that are in divisions below your weight class.
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