By Dan Ambrose: Floyd Mayweather Jr. (43-0, 26 KO’s) isn’t too impressed with the talent of his opponent Robert “The Ghost” Guerrero (31-1-1, 18 KO’s), but he does see him as a good grappler, someone that can get in there and wrestle and rough you up.
However, Mayweather doesn’t see Guerrero as a high quality fighter judging by how he struggled to beat Michael Katsidis, Joel Casamayor and Selcuk Aydin.
Mayweather said to RingTV “I seen him when he fought Andre Berto, and he done what he had to do. He was a good grappler…Casamayor going the distance with him at 40…or the fact that he had a dogfight with Katsidis.”
Mayweather easily defeated Juan Manuel Marquez in 2009, the same fighter that blew through Katsidis in a 9th round TKO in 2010,
Guerrero is a much better fighter in grappling and roughing up his opponents compared to Mayweather.
That’s part of the game that Mayweather hasn’t refined because he hasn’t had to. He’s had so much hand speed, talent a raw ability going for him that he didn’t need to resort to holding and hitting, throwing rabbit punches or other such fouls to win fights like some fighters. He could win on his god given talent.
It’s been four years since Mayweather dominated Marquez in beating him by a 12 round unanimous decision, and Mayweather has aged since that time. But he’s still got enough left to do the same thing to Guerrero as long as he doesn’t have him holding onto his all night long. Mayweather can get the better of Guerrero in close or at the distant.
Berto struggled at handling Guerrero’s inside skills last November, but Mayweather is a level above Berto with his inside game and that’s something that Guerrero is going to find out on Saturday.
I know he’s high on what he was able to do to Berto, but Mayweather isn’t Berto and he’s not going to let Guerrero get away with the same kinds of things that he did with Berto. The referee likely won’t either.
Robert Byrd, the referee assigned to the fight, is a no nonsense type of referee. So if Guerrero tries to take the fight into the gutter to make it a boxing/MMA fight, Byrd will step in and straighten Guerrero up, or at least try to. If he has to disqualify Guerrero for fouling then so be it, just as long as the fight is held under the normal rules for boxing and not for MMA.
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