By Chris Williams: Trainer Roger Mayweather thinks Floyd Mayweather Jr. is going to need a knockout over Manny Pacquiao on May 2nd for him to get credit for beating him. With Mayweather being considered the best fighter in all of boxing, it puts a lot of pressure on him to not only beat Pacquiao but beat him badly by knocking him out.
Juan Manuel Marquez already exposed Pacquiao in 2012 in stopping him, and many fans believe that Marquez beat Pacquiao all four times he fought him. If Mayweather can’t beat Pacquiao like Marquez did, then he might not get the credit that he deserves for doing a job on him.
“Every time somebody talks about the fight, ‘Oh, you know you’re definitely going to have to knock out Pacquiao, otherwise, he (Mayweather) ain’t going to get no credit,'” Roger Mayweather said via Mlive.com. “But that’s part of boxing. As good as Floyd is supposed to be, I don’t think that they are going to give him the credit that he deserves (without a knockout).”
Roger brings up a good point. If Mayweather beats Pacquiao by a decision it’ll lead to a lot of fans doubting the win, questioning the judging, and thinking that it wasn’t decisive enough. It could lead to Mayweather losing credibility with boxing fans even with a win over Pacquiao. Instead of getting the appreciation and the kudos that you would think that Mayweather should receive for a win over the Filipino star, Mayweather could be skewered by many in the boxing world for not making it more one-sided. For this reason, Mayweather is going to need to go out there and score a knockout over Pacquiao to remove doubts in the eyes of fans on May 2nd at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nevada.
“It ain’t close to Floyd’s toughest fight,” Roger said about the Mayweather-Pacquiao fight. “Floyd’s fought better guys than Pacquiao.”
The guy that he feels was tougher than Pacquiao was Emmanuel Augustus, a fighter that Mayweather beat 15 years ago in a tougher than expected brawl.
I think you can make an argument that Miguel Cotto, Saul “Canelo” Alvarez and Marcos Maidana were potentially tougher fights for Mayweather than what we could be seeing next Saturday night in his fight against Pacquiao. We’re going to find out soon whether that’s the case, but I can see how some fans would see Cotto, Canelo and Maidana as tougher fights for Mayweather due to their punching power, size and ability to put pressure on Mayweather. They were all heavier than Mayweather with better power.
Those were not easy fights for Mayweather even though he ultimately look easy in beating them all. The Canelo ended up being easy simply because Canelo didn’t fight his own fight. Instead of using his huge weight advantage, he tried to box with Mayweather for most of the fight until he realized in the 9th round that he needed to go after him and try and slug it out. By then it was too late because Mayweather had too big of a lead and he wasn’t going to lose unless Canelo could have scored a knockout, which didn’t happen.
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