I get the distinct impression that Mayweather is more concerned about protrecting his undefeated legacy than he is about various blood tests and all the other bullshit baggage associated with this fantasy fight. What the he’ll is going on here? This would be one of the biggest paydays in boxing history no doubt. Could bring the sport back to relevancy if it went long and resulted in a KO. What is with these dudes?
Who would win in your opinion?
Why won’t they just get in the fucking ring already?
I think P would clown M and that’s why floyd won’t man up and take the beating.
It’ll happen. Both fighters want to see it happen, to secure their legacy. Mayweather has everything to gain by stalling - more time to train, more time to study Pac, and most importantly more time to whip the boxing world into a frenzy to see the fight of the 21st century. I can’t see them not wanting to cash that paycheck.
Really, Mayweather is in a no-real-loss situation here. Losing his unbeaten record to The Pacman would be less of a blow to his reputation, than avoiding the fight. If he does get beat, he’s guaranteed another big payday against Manny, unless he is beaten comprehensively… which I can’t see happening.
Mayweather has beaten all the so called stars that he fought and made them look bad. I don’t like his style. He is like Roy Jones and never takes a guy on directly. He hunts and pecks and jumps back. But, it works. When his hands slow down ,it will all end in a crash. But, that is not happening now.
If greatness is defined by how many times you hit without getting hit, Mayweather is up there with the very best, but I agree, he’s not my ideal fighter.
Mayweather is making tons of money but is spending it. He walks around with pockets full of cash and spreads it around. That attitude is not wise. Boxers end their careers young and they have to survive a long time without working.
I think that Mayweather is the greatest pound-for-pound boxer in history. While we’d all love to see boxers fighting Rocky-style, it’s not realistic. Every boxer attempts to avoid getting hit. The ones that don’t never make it in the boxing world. Boxers like Mayweather, Hopkins, etc. just do it better than the others. The same complaints that are made against Mayweather’s style could have been used on Ali. I wasn’t old enough to follow most of Ali’s career, so I don’t know if similar complaints were made back then.
I agree that avoiding Pacquiao would be a serious setback to Mayweather’s legacy. But losing would be worse and he knows it. As much as Mayweather presents himself as a money-loving thug, I truly believe that he’s the smartest boxer out there. I think that he’s just buying time to see Pacquiao age a bit more and determining his chances of winning.
They were not. Ali was the most exciting fighter of his generation, maybe any generation. He was the anti-Floyd.
You could be right about Floyd being the greatest pfp in history, mind, but it’s next to impossible to make these sort of comparisons these days. The boxing game has shrunk and contracted in relevance to such an extent that it’s just not possible to compare today’s stars with the legends of the past. What could Floyd possibly do such that we could compare him to Sugar Ray Robinson? He could beat Pacquio standing on his head, plus three rematches, and he still wouldn’t be in that conversation. It’s a bit like jazz - doesn’t matter how well a kid plays the tenor sax today, he’s not ever going to be in the same league as Charlie Parker.
Anyhow, I agree that the fight will get made - they’re just letting it brew a while. Would love to see Floyd get sat down on his arse, but can’t see it happening. Either way, seeing Floyd fight under genuine pressure could lead to an awesome display of boxing.
I agree that it’s impossible to compare eras. My premise is that athetes simply get better over time. We see this clearly in every sport with measurable and objective benchmarks. We know that Jesse Owens, in his prime, would probably not even qualify for the finals of the Olympic 100-meter dash of today. This is clearly due to better knowledge, diet, training and equipment of the modern world.
Perhaps it’s fairer to compare athletes to other athletes of their generation. But now we get to subjective measurements that could show that an athlete from the '30s was better than one of today. But this implies equal levels of competition. In essence, we would have to assume that the median athlete in a sport is always the baseline, and greatness is defined by an athlete’s performance relative to that median athlete.
Finally, many experts do what you did, and actually make a subjective assessment of an actual era in relation to other eras. This automatically props up every athlete from some “golden age” of the past. To me, this is a huge leap of faith that can be driven not only by romantic memories of years-gone-by, but also by conventional wisdom of today’s “experts”, many who were building their expertise decades ago. But when I go back and watch baseball, football, basketball and boxing from the '70s, I think that the level of competition was actually much worse than that of today. The speed, athletic ability, etc. of today’s athletes tells me that they are just better, period.
If we took Jesse Owens in his prime and ran him against Usain Bolt of today, Owens wouldn’t stand a chance. And similarly, Muhammad Ali of the early '70s would get knocked out easily by Lennox Lewis of the early '00s.
I disagree. While I believe that the fight will eventually happen and that Mayweather is stalling, either for time or to build anticipation, these delays only serve to make Mayweather look like a chickenshit, which is a far worse setback to his “legacy” than any loss would be.
Let’s say that the fight happens in November as planned and Mayweather loses by decision. Then there’s always the rematch, which will be even bigger than this fight. But the more times he forces a postponement, the worse a loss will be perceived. And even if he wins, it’ll look to some like he manipulated the situation to his advantage. Most fight fans I know already see these delays as Mayweather ducking the fight.
As far as Floyd being the “smartest boxer out there”, well, he’s certainly smart enough to realize that Pacquiao stands an excellent chance of winning. So what? Boxing is about having the courage to face that kind of challenge. Pacquiao’s not afraid of fighting Mayweather, and now it’s time for Floyd to step up and show the same to Manny.
And, no matter how long Pacquiao “ages”, he’ll still be younger than Mayweather.
I don’t know. I too think Mayweather is ducking Pac-Man, but if Mayweather wins, his vindication will far overshadow any grumbles that he manipulated the situation.
Why isn’t boxing organizing the title fight? It should be natural for the two best to be placed head to head to determine the champion. Why is boxing allowing all these delays and excuses? Why are promoters, not boxing’s powers-that-be, controlling this matchup?
Sorry, my Packers won’t play your Steelers unless Big Ben gets a drug test and we’re guaranteed this much money. If not, the deal’s off and we’ll play the Browns instead.
Because, the promoters are boxing’s powers-that-be. The sanctioning bodies (WBC, WBO, IBF and a thousand other ones) have never been match making organizations. They just sanction fights for a cut of the money.
Lack of a strong centralized league (think UFC) has done as much to kill boxing as anything in the last 30 years.
Mayweather needs to make the fight happen sooner rather than later. He is so reliant on raw speed and reflexes, and those are the first things to go. He’s already 34. That’s the same age Roy Jones was when his career suddenly took a nosedive and never recovered. He has a young man’s style. Pacquaio does too to a certain degree, but I think Pac will be able to have more success in his later years.
Another thing to consider is Mayweather has fought only 5 times in the last 5 years. And some of that competition such as Marquez and Mosley turned out to be less than stellar in hindsight. (I admit Mosley looked game going into the fight tho). He may find that when he steps it back up to the very pinnacle of the sport, he may not be able to do the same things he used to. He may appear to get old overnight.
Knowing the sometimes disappointing sport that this is, we will probably see Pac vs Mayweather in 2016, in manila at middleweight or some such garbage. When they are both looking for a payday to retire on.
Not really feeling the RJJ comparisons - Floyd has a very correct set of fundamental boxing skills istm, that he builds great flair on top of. He never shows his arse in the ring the way Roy used to.
Prime RJJ was a superfreak, but that’s the worst style for old man boxing. Floyd is much better equipped to box into his late 30s. They both share a cautious approach to making fights happen though, that’s for sure.
I see this thread is from last year - I’ve really switched off from the boxing scene recently. I thought I heard Floyd was pencilled in to fight someone else as a warm up?