By Alex Miles: This Saturday night, Floyd Mayweather (39-0-25 KO’s) will be fighting an indomitable Mexican warrior in the form of Juan Manuel Marquez (50-4-1, 37 KO’s). Now, I believe that people can say what they want about Mayweather’s wafer thing visade of bravado and Egocentrism, despite the fact that it is merely there to define the bad guy in each scenario, you know, to sell tickets.
But to criticize him so heavily for being a ‘safety first’ fighter, or for fighting a smaller guy? When he boxed in the 1996 Olympics, he was a featherweight, and he started out professionally at super featherweight in the same year. He has consistently moved up in weight to take on the best in each division, with few people boasting a more impressive fight resume, and despite this, I never once heard a complaint or worry about Floyd moving up to 154 to take on Oscar, a fighter 2 inches taller than him. There is less of a difference between him and Juan, but people are out to crucify him for some reason.
Now, the ‘safety first’ accusation. Its this kind of knuckle dragging complaint which make people believe boxing is some sort of roman blood sport, where skill is looked down on, and the highest entertainment is watching fighters destroy each other.
Mayweather never fails to put on an awesome defensive clinic, which is entertainment enough for any real boxing fan. Its not as if he’s a John Ruiz character or Wladimir Klitschko, jabbing and hugging his way to victory. I don’t watch their fights because they are technically poor, and show great cowardice on the combatant’s part. Floyd fights high quality opponents, and more often than not, makes them look ordinary. He really shouldn’t be punished for being the best in the world.
If you want to criticize a part of the fight for something, it should probably be that his production company cant put together a decent under card to save their lives. That’s a reason to say that Floyd sucks, not because he’s essentially unbeatable.
I guarantee that Kelly Pavlik wouldn’t get anywhere near the same abuse if Floyd was moving up to fight him, so why does Marquez comes off as the wronged party here?
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