By Chris Williams: Floyd Mayweather Jr. wasn’t in the mood to play around on Monday night in destroying Japanese kick boxer Tenshin Nasukawa in a first round knockout in their exhibition match at the Saitma Arena in Saitama, Japan. The 41-year-old Mayweather came out on his front foot, blasting the much smaller 20-year-old Nasukawa with right hands and left hooks, which he had no defense for. Before the brutal slaughter was over, Mayweather had dropped the hapless Nasukawa three times in the fight before the plug was pulled on the combat exhibition match.
Mayweather had a smile on his face the entire time he was blasting away at the young Japanese fighter. It made the fight look like it wasn’t a serious one, which you can argue that it was never intended to be. Before tonight, Nasukawa had never competed inside a boxing ring against a real boxer. Like Mayweather’s last opponent Conor McGregor, Nasugawa is a MMA fighter, who has no experience in boxing. Although Tenshin’s sport of kick boxing does involve a lot of punching, most of the emphasis is on kicking. Not surprisingly, there are no Mayweather-like talents in kick boxing in terms of punching ability. If there was, that fighter would move over to boxing in order to get the big paydays.
Mayweather says he made a cool $9 million for his three minutes of action in his 3-minute exhibition match against Tenshin on Monday night. That’s not bad. For just three minutes of work, $9 million is some clean cash. Any fighter in boxing wouldn’t mind coming over to MMA to scoop up that kind of green for just three minutes against a hopefully over-matched opponent with no skills or experience inside the squared circle to speak of.
Since this was an exhibition match, the results of the contest won’t count on Mayweather or Tenishin’s records. It’s just an event where both guys basically sparred with each other in front of a large audience of boxing and MMA fans. It’s a good thing for the fans, and for both fighters. Tenshin gets experience at fighting one of the greatest boxers of all times. Mayweather gets the ring rust out against a younger, smaller and incredibly quick fighter. On top of that, both fighters were paid well.
Despite worry of Tenshin possibly kicking Mayweather or using some of his other MMA tactics, he kept it clean the entire three minute fight. Had Tenshin decided to break the contractually agreed upon rules for the fight, he would have been faced with a huge penalty with him losing a portion of his purse in fines. It’s unknown how much that penalty was. Given how quickly Tenshin was hurt by Mayweather in the 1st round, he didn’t get a chance to do anything. Even if Tenshin had planned on using some of his MMA tactics, Mayweather was all over him too quickly for there to be an opportunity. It’s unclear whether the potential of Tenshin using an illegal kick is what caused Mayweather to jump on him so fast from the get go in round one. Mayweather usually starts out slowly in his fights in boxing his opponents with pot shots before eventually pouring it on a little in the later rounds. During his career, Mayweather stopped shooting for knockouts close to 17 years ago. Up until 2001, Mayweather was knocking out most of his opponents at super featherweight. However, after Mayweather moved up in weight to 135, he started boxing more and he was no longer knocking guys out. Tonight, Mayweather showed a glimpse of the fighter that he was in 2001, when he knocked out Diego Corrales and stopped Carlos Hernandez. Those are fighters that had much better fistic skills than what we saw from Tenshin tonight. The Japanese fighter looked like a novice inside the ring with Mayweather, which is understandable, because he’s not a boxer. He’s a kick boxer.
Due to the speedy way that Mayweather knocked out Tenshin tonight, it’s hard to say that the Japanese fighter gained any fame from the fight. If Tenshin had been able to give Mayweather some problems in the fight in the process of losing, then he would have come out of the fight smelling like a rose. The opposite happened unfortunately for Tenshin. he was blasted around the ring like a punching bag, and made to look really bad. The way that Tenshin was pummeled by Mayweather, there’s no upside for him in the aftermath of the fight. Other than the payday that Tenishin is getting for the three minutes of action, he’s not coming out of this fight with popularity for having given Mayweather a fight. It was too one-sided for Nasukawa to have gained a lot of respect from the MMA and boxing fans. Mayweather didn’t carry Tenshin the way that he appeared to carry his last over-matched MMA opponent Conor McGregor. Of course, Conor wasn’t talking about potentially kicking him during the fight. There was no urgency for Mayweather to take McGregor out as fast as possible to make sure that he didn’t kick him or put him in an MMA hold that put him to sleep. Mayweather didn’t have to go after McGregor to make sure he didn’t bend the rules at some point in order to get headlines after the fight. Tonight, Mayweather wasn’t going to give Tenshin a chance to do anything outside of the rules, if that was something that he was planning to do. Mayweather made sure that Tenshin was rendered harmless by smashing him as fast as possible.
Where Mayweather goes from here is the big question. He had originally wanted to fight another UFC fighter, but that failed to happen. With the money Mayweather can make fighting guys from the MMA, there’s no reason for him to return to boxing to face guys from that sport. While there would be a ton of interest from fans to see Mayweather take on the likes of Saul Canelo Alvarez, the weight difference between the two fighters is now too vast for a fight between them to be made. When Mayweather defeated Canelo in 2013, the Mexican fighter was competing at junior middleweight in the 154 lb weight class, so it wasn’t a hard fight to put together. But now that Canelo has moved up to 160 and 168, it’s not feasible for a fight between him and Mayweather to take place. Canelo is rumored to be rehyrating to the 180s for his fights at middleweight. Mayweather would likely be no more than 165 lbs in a fight against Canelo. He would be outweighed by a tremendous amount, and it wouldn’t work. Mayweather can’t be taking on fighters that outweigh him by 15 to 20 lbs without a handicap. If Canelo could come back down to the 154 lb weight division and agree to a rehydration clause that keeps him from ballooning up to 180+ lbs on the day of the fight, then it might be a realistic fight that can be made. But as big big a star that Canelo is now, he’d likely never agree to fighting Mayweather at 154 and say yes to a rehydration limit for his weight. For Mayweather to fight Canelo now, he would clearly nee to agree to fight him at middleweight at 160 or else there would be no fight.