By Dennis McCarthy: Photo credit: Naoki Fakuda – Early this morning, Floyd won a very easy, but in some people’s mind, a very questionable 4th round stoppage over younger challenger Victor Ortiz.
Ortiz, already a distance behind Mayweather on the scorecards, decided the only way he could possible win this bout was to use a different method, a head butt that would have got a standing ovation from Timothy Bradley, to try and reduce Mayweather to the canvass for the first time in his career. Cortez was right to step in at this point, breaking up both fighters to reprimand the youngster. I found what happened next quite bemusing.
Victor immediately apologized, which Floyd accepted, which was nice. The ref then indicated the two fighters to once again engage, Victor then apologizes again, in which both fighters touched gloves. Why Ortiz then felt to try and cuddle Mayweather and apologize for a third time is beyond me. This is a 36 minute fight at most. What boxing fans (most of whom have shelved out a small fortune to watch) don’t want to see, is to spend half the fight watching two men become friends. Mayweather had every right, as the fight was restarted, to throw a punch or two, or as many as he liked. Ortiz for some bizarre reason kept his hands low, and despite receiving one punch from Mayweather, still seemed reluctant to try and defend himself in any way from a future bombardment, which he then received and went down.
I Kind of got the impression that Ortiz gave up, maybe that was just me, but I got that impression from watching Ortiz try half hardheartedly to get up, smiles all over his face. Boxers nowadays seem to be happy to lose as long as they can save a bit of face (Kermit Cintron for one).
A rematch nowadays is pointless, as Ortiz showed in those 4 rounds that he is not in Floyd’s league.
The highlight of my night, however came after the fight, when Mayweather finally got tired of interviewer’s Larry Merchant’s constant negativity towards him, and the two men then squared up (looking slightly staged on Merchant’s part). Merchant has always grated me with his depressingly boring voice and the fact he looks like he’s going to keel over at any stage of an interview.
Now we wait. As soon as Pacquiao has finished fighting Marquez for the 75th time. These two surely have to get in on now. As time goes on, with both fighters starting to lose a yard of pace, this will surely affect Pacquiao more as he needs to constantly throw punches from the first bell until the final. Take away his ability to do this, and you take away his one chance of beating the defensive genius that is Floyd Mayweather.
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