By Chris Williams: I’m really hoping Floyd Mayweather Jr. puts in one of his better performances this Saturday night against Juan Manuel Marquez at the MGM Grand, in Las Vegas. I have high hopes that Mayweather will feel the pressure to perform because of all the negative feedback that he’s been receiving in the past couple of weeks about his dull fighting style.
However, I’m a realist and I can’t see Mayweather being anything more than he’s been in the past, so I expect to see Mayweather running from Marquez all night on Saturday night. This will really make Mayweather look bad, let me tell you, but I think he’s got the safety-first style of fighting too ingrained inside of him to change to a more crowd pleasing fighter.
I do think Mayweather will come out fast and show some offense in the 1st, possibly the 2nd round against Marquez. But, once Marquez starts laying some leather on Mayweather, hitting him to the head and body with big shots, I see Mayweather taking off like a scalded dog and getting on his bicycle to avoid absorbing additional punishment.
Mayweather has set himself up in this fight to look bad no matter what by fighting an opponent two divisions below him in weight. Like someone pointed previously, Mayweather could get away with this if this was the first time he’d picked a tiny guy to fight. But, heck, Mayweather fought Ricky Hatton, a light welterweight, in his last fight before retiring in December 2007.
You can’t keep fighting smaller fighters without the boxing public noticing. How would people feel if Vitali Klitschko chose to fight light heavyweights over and over again? They’d say, what’s up with Klitschko? Is he afraid to fight someone his own size?’ That’s the way it is with Mayweather.
By choosing a lightweight to fight, Mayweather has to go toe-to-toe with him if he wants to get out of this fight looking good with the boxing public. Will Mayweather fight aggressively against Marquez? He probably won’t going by his past fights. Fighters can change, especially aging ones like the 32-year-old Mayweather. But it’s not easy to change, in particular when they’ve been fighting for 13 years as a pro like Mayweather has.
It comes down to this: If Mayweather runs from Marquez all night long, he’ll probably be branded a coward by boxing fans. However, if Mayweather stands his ground and lets his punches go and tries to knock Marquez out, Mayweather will, of course, come off much better. But he still won’t get the attention that he might have because he chose a lightweight to fight.
You got to pick on fighters your own size, and not cherry pick popular fighters from the lower weight classes to beat up on. This isn’t a fight that the boxing public was crying out for, so that’s not an excuse to use for fighting a little guy like Marquez.
Heck, the boxing public is hardly interested in this fight at all and you can hardly blame them. Mayweather could have chosen a popular welterweight to fight. There’s a at least three or four of them that Mayweather could have fought.
Or if Mayweather didn’t want to fight a welterweight, he could have selected a bigger fighter to go up against like Paul Williams or Sergio Martinez. Either of those opponents would have been great. I think when two fighters from different weight classes meet up; the smaller guy gets credit whereas the bigger fighter is often looked down on with disdain.
Personally, I think this fight is going to be a stinker. Look for a lot of running from Mayweather. I’m sure glad I’m saving my $50.
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