By Chris Williams: WBC middleweight champion Sergio Martinez can forget about a fight with Floyd Mayweather Jr. because Money Mayweather sees Martinez as being too big fight him due to Martinez fighting at middleweight, while Mayweather campaigns at 147.
A fight between Mayweather and Martinez was recently made opposition with Mayweather moving over to Showtime, and leaving Martinez with HBO. With both guys signed for fights on these networks, it’s not possible for them to fight on a different network.
Mayweather said this as quoted by mlive.com: “Sergio Martinez is 160. Floyd Mayweather walks around at 147. Where was Sergio Martinez when I was dominating when I was 21? Nowhere to be found.”
Martinez has been after Mayweather for quite some time for a fight.
Martinez has said he’d even be willing to fight Mayweather at a catch-weight in order to make the fight happen. The problem is the catch-weight still wouldn’t change anything because Martinez walks around at 170, so he’d cut down to 150 lbs to make weight for Mayweather, and then likely rehydrate up to 170 lbs.
Mayweather fights pretty much right at 147 without any rehydration. He’d be giving up close to 20 pounds against Martinez, and it would be a huge weight disadvantage for Mayweather.
I know Sergio fought at a weight disadvantage recently in his last fight against former WBC middleweight champion Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. last year in September, but Chavez Jr. is a plodder and nothing like what Mayweather would have to go through if he fought the bigger and much heavier Martinez.
The only way a fight between Mayweather and Martinez would work is if there was a rehydration limit of five pounds so that Martinez couldn’t balloon up to 170 the day of the fight and enjoy a big weight advantage over Mayweather.
When Mayweather was 21, Sergio Martinez was in his second year as a pro fighting obscure opposition in Argentina at welterweight and junior middleweight. Mayweather was a super featherweight when he was 21 and he was fighting at an extremely high level.
Martinez wasn’t the fighter back then compared to how he is now. Martinez’s fighting style has changed dramatically over the years with Martinez using a lot of movement instead of mixing it up the way he did earlier in his career when he first started out.
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