By Jason Kim: Floyd Mayweather Jr. probably will have enough left in the tank to beat lightweight Juan Manuel Marquez on Saturday night at the MGM Grand, in Las Vegas, Nevada, but I don’t see Mayweather lasting too much longer at the top of the sport. Typically, fighters that retire and make a comeback fail more often than not. I don’t if it’s the age, or the changes that occur in one’s body after a fighter stops training.
Whatever it is, most of the time fighters aren’t able to make it back to their previous top form. A few examples of fighters that did make it back are as follows: Sugar Ray Leonard, George Foreman, Vitali Klitschko, and to a much lesser extent Mike Tyson. However, in almost every case, the fighters didn’t last that long in their comeback.
Mayweather has been out of boxing for 21 months now and having a really good time of it judging by his seemingly opulent lifestyle on the Mayweather-Marquez 24/7 series. Mayweather is coming back from that easy life into a tough fight against one of the best lightweights in the division. I think Mayweather will probably have more than enough left to beat Marquez, because he will be the bigger fighter than Marquez.
But looking down the road, I don’t see an easy time for Mayweather unless he carefully selects his opponents to make sure he fights less than dangerous ones. Mayweather probably won’t successful if he selects opponents from his own weight class because those fighters have better power than Mayweather, and in most cases, are bigger than him and have better work rates.
Mayweather’s speed and defense is a great asset for him, there’s no question about that. However, in facing fighters that are taller than him, stronger and with a better punch output, Mayweather’s speed and defensive skills are outweighed. This is why I suspect that Mayweather will continue to choose smaller fighters to mix it up with, because if he takes on welterweights, then most of his built in advantages go out the window.
Selecting for a small opposition is actually quite smart when you think about it. Can you imagine how long Foreman and Tyson would have been able to reign if they fought mostly light heavyweights during their comeback? Of course, it wouldn’t work unless there were stars in that division that the public cared about seeing.
But if there was, I could see Foreman and Tyson fighting into 50s against the smaller fighters. This is why what Mayweather is doing is so brilliant. If Mayweather can continue to hand pick super featherweights like Manny Pacquiao or blown up lightweights like Marquez to fight, I can’t see Mayweather being beaten for quite some time.
There isn’t a whole lot of big named fighters in the super featherweight and lightweight division for Mayweather to fight, but he can always fight rematches with Marquez and Pacquiao two or three times and string it along until 2011 or 2012. It would save Mayweather a lot of punishment because those fighters don’t have the kind of power that welterweights do and they would have a harder time landing their shots because of their limited height and reach.
But if Mayweather chooses to fight welterweights, then I can’t see him lasting much longer at the top. He’ll get beaten by someone like Mosley, Cotto or Paul Williams.
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