Floyd Mayweather is not in his prime anymore and he hasn’t been in his prime for a very long time. It did not take back to back fights with Marcos Maidana to tell us that but his last fight just pronounced it even more. Mayweather has been on the mainstream boxing scene for a very long time from the Olympic Bronze medal to his most recent victory over Marcos Maidana. When I first started watching him as a young up and comer I could tell that he was going to be something special. He was lightning fast with good power and his skill set was head and shoulders above his competition at the time. Every challenge that was placed in front of him he dispatched with ease, including Genaro Hernandez whom he defeated for his first championship.
Around the time he was coming up most had either Shane Mosley or Roy Jones Jr. as number one on their pound for pound list with Mayweather hovering somewhere around the top 10 in most reputable organizations list. Then came the Diego Corrales fight. Corrales was physically huge for the 130 pound division because he was very tall and he also had very good power. When he and Mayweather fought it was being called a “pick-em” fight with a lot of people favoring Corrales to win by knock out. What Mayweather did that night was utter domination by any standards. He completely embarrassed a fellow title holder and made him look like he had no boxing skills at all while proving that he was even better than most had thought. Corrales never reached double digit connects in any round during the whole fight. Truth be told the fight was actually over before it started but we just didn’t know it.
After that fight I elevated Floyd to number one on my personal pound for pound list. My criteria was based on who had the best offense, best defense and best all-around skill as a fighter and to me it was Floyd hands down. One could see at the time that Roy Jones Jr. was the most physically gifted fighter around but he relied on his reflexes to outclass his opposition and that doesn’t last forever as we would later find out. Shane Mosely was lightning fast as well and had more power than Mayweather but he did not possess the defensive abilities that Mayweather did for me to rate him ahead of Mayweather on my pound for pound list. You could tell that even when Mayweather got older he was so good defensively that he would still be able to outclass other fighters because he actually knew how to box and his reflexes were a bonus.
Dating back to 2007 and his fight with Oscar De La Hoya, Mayweather’s opponents are 351-21 at the time he fought them according to BoxRec. No matter who you are those are pretty good numbers in respects to win loss ratio. During his second fight with Maidana I watched the fight and the whole time they were fighting I couldn’t help but think that Floyd was on the decline. Sure Maidana is very awkward and throws multiple punches from odd angles but I couldn’t help but think it was something else.
Floyd was easily getting hit by jabs from time to time and even ran into a punch in the 3rd round that was eerily reminiscent of the punch landed by Juan Manuel Marquez that knocked Manny Pacquiao unconscious. Marcos even beat Mayweather to the punch on more than one occasion. But what got me was the amount of punches that Mayweather was missing and the way they were missing. He was wild at times and even fell down after a winging left hook in the 2nd round. He didn’t seem to be his same, sharp self that he had been and I couldn’t help but think; has he gotten older? Is he past his prime? Has all the drama outside the ring gotten to him? Most likely the answer is all of the above in some way, shape or form.
After the fight I heard a range of things from ‘Floyd is done and should retire’, to ‘He only won because of holding,’ etc… It’s all rubbish. Mayweather has gotten older. Mayweather has lost a step or 2. Does it mean that he is still not better the rest of the guys he is fighting? No. It just seems that way because he was so good for so long, that when he does not dominate it looks like he is not as good to some fans. I won’t take away from his opponent and say that it was all Mayweather that made him not be as dominate because Maidana is a heck of a fighter and has real power in both hands with a normally relentless style. He has to be respected no matter who you are and Mayweather did just that.
I won’t say that Mayweather got help from Kenny Bayless or that he was a whiner for complaining about a “supposed” bite on his hand. He didn’t need either to win that fight. We already saw what Maidana could do when the referee doesn’t break up the fight every 5 seconds and Maidana lost that fight too remember? If he didn’t win when he tackled, kneed, rabbit punched, head-butted and went windmill style on Mayweather, he surely was not going to win when a referee was overactive in the fight. All that still doesn’t explain the fact that Mayweather was sloppy at times and out of sorts.
What it does explain is the fact that Mayweather is losing a fight that countless others have lost before him. The greats like Leonard, Holyfield, Toney, Ali, Tyson, De La Hoya, Mosely, Arguello, Duran, Morales, Barerra and so on were all defeated by father time. It’s inevitable. Time waits for no man. Mayweather is no exception. His reflexes are slowing down and he is not the same fighter he was in his prime but with that being said this version of Mayweather is still better than everyone else in his division except he now looks human. We easily forget that just two fights ago he dominated a fighter one division north of his own and arguably didn’t lose a round. The fight before that he dominated a young hungry fighter right after coming out of jail. His reflexes were slowing down then just as they were against Maidana. He just wasn’t fighting Maidana.
He won’t be fighting a Maidana type fighter again most likely. Whether he fights Cotto or Pacman next, he will not have to deal with the unpredictable whirlwind fighting style that he had with Maidana. Even a fight with Amir Khan won’t be as daunting because of the fact that Khan has a shaky chin. Mayweather will go back to looking more dominant in fighting these fighters but the fact will remain the same. Mayweather is declining and losing the fight against father time. It’s not a bad thing. It’s not even his fault. It’s just the way things work. It’s just the inevitable decline of a great fighter.
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