Wanheng Menayothin defeats Pedro Taduran, surpasses Mayweather’s 50-0 record

By Boxing News - 08/30/2018 - Comments

By Jim Dower: Wanheng Menayothin smashed Floyd Mayweather Jr’s 50-0 record on Wednesday night in defeating Pedro Taduran by a 12 round unanimous decision to improve to 51-0. The 32-year-old Menayothin won the fight by the scores 117-110, 118-108 and 115-111.

The victory for Menayothin (51-0, 18 KOs) was his 10th successful title defense of his World Boxing Council minimumweight title that he won in November 2014. The fight took place at the Nakhon Sawan, Thailand. Taduran had 2 point deducted from him during the contest. The first came in the 8th round after one of his shots strayed low, and then another point taken in the 12th round from another low blow. It didn’t matter though. #14 WBC Taduran wasn’t going to win the fight anyway.

The 21-year-old Taduran, who comes from the Philippines, came into the fight with a six-fight winning streak. His last defeat was two years ago in losing to Joel Lino (2-0). Since that fight, Taduran had been facing largely woeful opposition with terrible records. The WBC obviously that Taduran had done enough in recent years for them to give him a No.14 record.

Last May, Menayothin tied Mayweaher’s record of 50-0 with a 5th round knockout of Leroy Estrada. In Menayothin’s previous fight, he defeated journeyman Jack Amisa (21-45-2) by a 6 round unanimous decision in a non-title fight to improve his record to 49-0.

It’s match-making like that which has made it possible for Menayothin to surpass Mayweather’s record. Menayothin. In 2016, Menayothin defeated a fighter named Edo Anggoro (7-6) by a 4th round knockout. With match-making like that, it’s easy to see how Menayothin was able to compile a 51-0 record.

The only question is how far can Menayothin go. If he’s going to be mixing in fighters with atrocious records every two or three fights, it’s possible that he could go 60-0 or even 70-0, but the record won’t have much meaning given how weak Menayothin’s resume is. When you face embarrassingly bad opposition, it’s possible to put together impressive records. In between title defenses, Menayothin fights six and eight round non-title defenses against weak opposition. That obviously helped him break Mayweather;s 51-0 record.

Like Mayweather, Menayothin has been matched carefully during his career. Building an impressive 51-0 record requires the right match-making. We saw that with Mayweather compiling a 50-0 record. There were certain guys that Mayweather never fought like Gennady Golovkin, Paul Williams, Antonio Margarito, Keith Thurman, Errol Spence Jr., Terence Crawford, Kostya Tszyu, Jermell Charlo, Jermall Charlo, Erislandy Lara and Jarrett Hurd. Mayweather made huge money in winning his 50th fight in beating MMA fighter Conor McGregor.

Menayothin did well in holding onto his WBC title for four years, but you can’t say much about all the poor opponents on his resume. When you pick out the weak opposition on Menayothin’s resume, you’re left with only 10 decent opponents.