Floyd Mayweather Jr. Announces Retirement

mayweather55646834.jpgBy Eric Thomas: In the latest boxing news, undefeated WBC welterweight champion Floyd Mayweather Jr. (39-0, 25 KOs) has came out today and announced that he’s permanently retiring from boxing effective immediately. The 31 year-old Mayweather won’t be fighting one last fight against Oscar De La Hoya, which had been previously scheduled for September 20th, and one that was looked forward to by many fans of both fighters. It’s unclear whether or not Mayweather, a fighter that carries his emotions on his sleeves, intends on staying retired for long, however. Right now, Mayweather has made a huge bundle of money in his last two fights against De La Hoya and Ricky Hatton, both of whom he defeated.

He also made another huge payday at the WrestleMania XXIX, which took place in March, 2008. With that kind of money, it’s not surprising that Mayweather wants to step away from the sport, especially now that he has a number of hard fights in the future staring down at him.

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Cotto vs. Margarito: To Settle Who’s The #2 Welterweight, Behind Mayweather

cotto4635335.jpgBy Manuel Perez: It isn’t often that boxing fans get to see a match-up as important or potentially as exciting as the July 26th title bout between unbeaten WBA welterweight champion Miguel Cotto (32-0, 26 KOs) and challenger Antonio Margarito (36-5, 26 KOs) at the MGM Grand, in Las Vegas, Nevada. Though both fighters like to say that this bout will decide which fighter is the number # 1 welterweight in the division, it’s clear to most boxing experts that WBC welterweight champion Floyd Mayweather Jr. is still the number one guy in the division no matter who comes out the winner between Cotto and Margarito.

The problem with Mayweather, however, is that he’s not likely to fight Cotto or Margarito any time soon, if ever. That, sadly, leaves it to the fans and boxing writers to decide among themselves who the real number one fighter is in the division. At this point, it’s still Mayweather, as he still looks to be a level above Cotto or Margarito in terms of skills. That’s likely to change, though, in the next year or so, especially if Mayweather fails to take on anyone other than Oscar De La Hoya and Ricky Hatton.

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Mayweather-Cotto: A matter of time

mayweather45654631.jpgBy Shaun Brown: For many a fight fan, the prospect of boxing pound-for-pound king Floyd Mayweather facing Puerto Rico’s finest Miguel Cotto has been nothing but a dream for us all.

With Oscar De La Hoya (rematch) and Antonio Margarito lined up as their respective opponents, aligned with recent comments from Roger Mayweather: “If it makes dollars, it makes sense. We’ve got to wait and see how he looks vs Margarito to determine how big a fight between him and Floyd would be.” Do we dare start to believe that this dream could become a reality?

In all of this the Golden Boy himself, De La Hoya, will have a more integral part to play in the prospective meeting of the two than he would have dared to imagine. It’s all predictions at this point of course. Neither the ‘Pretty Boy’ or ‘Junito’ have spent much time during media calls calling one another out. Maybe they wont have to. If Mayweather Jnr defeats De La Hoya as expected and Cotto comes through the potential minefield that is Margarito, what route does either victor have left to go down except to face one another?

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Hatton-Mayweather II: Does Anyone Really Want To See This?

hatton5555555.jpgBy Eric Thomas: With most people’s thoughts on this Saturday’s bout between Ricky Hatton (43-1, 31 KOs) and Juan Lazcano, a lot of the attention has seemed to have been drawn away from Hatton’s stated goal of fighting unbeaten WBC welterweight champion Floyd Mayweather Jr. in early 2009, a fight that is Hatton’s seemingly insane plan for vengeance. He appears to be dead set on making this fight happen, talking about the previous fight often, while seeing the fight through a foggy haze of a dimmed memory. As Hatton tells it, he was doing well against Mayweather in the 1st half of the fight.

Unfortunately, there are few people (other than Hatton fans) that remember him doing well at all in the early going. Perhaps there are fewer still that would like to see Hatton go up against Mayweather again for what most likely will be an even worse thumping than last time out. To be sure, Hatton seems genuine in his desire to get revenge, not just looking for another huge payday, which he’ll no doubt be getting. Last time out, he received thirty million for the fight, so I’m sure that is obviously one of his reasons for wanting to fight Mayweather a second time, though not the major reason.

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Is De La Hoya Improved Enough To Beat Mayweather?

delahoya455331.jpgBy Manuel Perez: While watching former welterweight champion Oscar De La Hoya (39-5, 30 KOs) giving Steve Forbes a boxing lesson en route to winning an easy 12-round unanimous decision on May 3rd, I couldn’t help but notice how improved De La Hoya was since seeing him last fight a year earlier against Floyd Mayweather Jr. in May 2007. De La Hoya, 36, seemed to have regained his speed, foot movement and ring intelligence against Forbes in a fight that turned out to be one-sided. Going into the fight, many people had been saying that Oscar was washed up, that he was over the hill and should consider retiring from boxing rather than prolonging his career and just wasting people’s money.

However, De La Hoya looked more than good, he looked superb against Forbes, a fighter with a style almost identical to Mayweather’s. It was clear, at least to me, that having Floyd Mayweather Sr. working in his corner for the training for his bout with Forbes, which was what was the missing ingredient that kept De La Hoya from beating Mayweather Jr. in their previous bout a year ago. It seems that Floyd Sr. showed De La Hoya how to solve Forbes’ style, and in doing so gave De La Hoya the tool for which to beat Mayweather Jr. Namely, by using fast combinations and sticking to his jab, De La Hoya has the missing factor that he needed in order to beat Mayweather Jr.

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Has Hatton Come Back Too Quickly After KO Loss To Mayweather?

hatton4434.jpgBy Jim Dower: Former champion Ricky Hatton (43-1, 31 KOs) may be biting off more than he can chew this Saturday in his comeback bout against Juan Lazcano (37-4, 27 KOs), whom he fights in Manchester in front of a large crowd of fans, hoping to see Hatton get back on the winning track. However, in choosing a fighter as good as Lazcano, 32, Hatton may have made a major mistake of the first order. Lazcano isn’t a second tier or a journeyman, which is the typical type of opponent that fighters select after having lost by knockout in their previous fights. Lazcano, though not ranked in the top 10, is a world class fighter and much better than most people are aware of.

Indeed, in his last fight against Vivian Harris, in a WBC light welterweight title eliminator in February 2007, Lazcano lost by a narrow 12-round decision against a fighter with superb skills. Lazcano fought competitively throughout, showing good power, a tough chin and an excellent work rate throughout the fight. It was only near the end of the fight that Harris pulled away a little, winning the last three rounds, that the fight was decided. If Hatton wanted to get an easy opponent, one that he can win without the least amount of trouble, Lazcano is the wrong opponent for him. But something that Hatton and his management seem to have forgotten, it seems, is that Hatton is coming off a bad knockout loss to Floyd Mayweather Jr. in December of last year.

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Why De La Hoya Will Defeat Mayweather

delahoya45533.jpgBy Aaron Klein: In watching Oscar De La Hoya (39-5, 30 KOs) completely take apart his opponent Steve Forbes last Saturday night, I saw the blueprint that Oscar had crafted, with the help of Floyd Mayweather Sr – his trainer – to use to beat Floyd Mayweather Jr. in their upcoming September 20th bout in Las Vegas. De La Hoya showed none of the mistakes that cost him in his last May in his split decision loss to Mayweather Jr. Showing an excellent jab, which Oscar kept in Forbes face for the entire fight, De La Hoya chose his moments wisely in which to go after Forbes with sharp attacks.

This strategy effectively conserved De La Hoya’s strength, allowing him to fight hard for the entire fight and keeping him from running out of gas like he often does when going the distance with opponents. De La Hoya didn’t let Forbes encourage him to brawl more than he wanted to, something that Oscar has had a problem with in his fights with opponents like Shane Mosley and Fernando Vargas, both of whom could get De La Hoya to get out of his game plan quite easily just be landing a flurry of shots. Against Forbes, De La Hoya kept his cool, thinking about his game plan and not getting drawn into brawling until he was ready to. This is an important factor for De La Hoya, because it shows that at age 35, he’s still learning.

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Floyd Mayweather Jr. – Is He Getting Diminishing Returns?

mayweather-hatton4444.jpgBy Chet Mills: At one time in his career, unbeaten Floyd Mayweather Jr. (39-0, 25 KOs) took on the best in each division he competed in. As a super featherweight, he defeated champion Genaro Hernandez. As a lightweight he defeated Jose Luis Castillo twice, and as a welterweight he defeated Zab Judah. It’s only recently, with his fights with Oscar De La Hoya and Ricky Hatton, that Mayweather has gone soft, taking on fighters that are not at the top of their class. In Hatton’s case, he was forced to fight out of his weight class – light welterweight – in order to fight Mayweather at welterweight.

As a result, Hatton looked like a Lilliputian next to Mayweather and lost badly in a 10th round TKO. As for De La Hoya, he’s been in a long career slide for the past five years prior to his fight with Mayweather in 2007, with De La Hoya winning two, losing two, with one of his wins by a dubious decision over Felix Sturm. No gave De La Hoya much of any chance at beating Mayweather, and he didn’t surprise anyone when he lost as expected he would. The fight was only as close as it was because Mayweather fought in strangely subdued manner, as if he was carrying De La Hoya in effort not to blow him out too easily.

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Floyd Mayweather Jr: Does He Rank As An All Time Great?

mayweather4565463.jpgBy Eric Thomas: Based on how his career has evolved, winning championship belts in the super featherweight, lightweight, junior welterweight, welterweight and junior middleweight divisions, should Floyd Mayweather Jr. (39-0, 25 KOs) be considered as an all time great in boxing? Although his career is far from finished at this point, and he still has a lot left to prove before he’s finished, is his credentials good enough to match up with other boxers such as Sugar Ray Robinson, Muhammed Ali and Jake Lamotta? There’s the some who would say no, suggesting that Mayweather saw fit to side step around the best in each division, staying away from fighters like Kostya Tszyu, Miguel Cotto, Paul Williams and Antonio Margarito.

For that, Mayweather has come up lacking, instead taking on fighters a shade below each of them, yet still saying that he’s the best in the division without having beaten the actual top guy. However, I’m not sure whether Mayweather needs to waste his time with trying to fight all of the top fighters when he probably already knows in his mind that he’s better. He doesn’t have to prove it to the fans, if he already knows inside that these fighters are beneath his dignity to even bother fighting in the first place. To be sure, I don’t see Tszyu as being able to hold a candle to Mayweather, for he’d likely get beaten just as easy as Hatton did, probably even worse than him.

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Should Mayweather Be Getting More Credit?

By Eric Thomas: Last week, Pound for Pound boxing great Floyd Mayweather Jr. took part in a Wrestlemania match, walkng away with a cool twenty million dollars for little more than 10 minutes of work in a staged match. Mayweather, 30, has seemingly stepped away from boxing as far as taking on the elite in the division. That is, unless you consider the 35 year-old Oscar De La Hoya and Ricky Hatton as the elite in the welterweight divison. I know for some fans, they certainly don’t and would be hard pressed to find few others, outside of one of Hatton’s British fans or one of De La Hoya’ fans. These comments are generally given by most fans about Mayweather’s choice of opponents in the past year.

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