Money Team veteran Ishe Smith (27-7, 12 KO’s) says Floyd ‘Money’ Mayweather Jr (48-0, 26 KO’s) may be undefeated, but he just cannot win.
Floyd is approaching what is believed to be his final appearance on September 12th in Las Vegas against Andre Berto (30-3, 23 KO’s), opening the discussion to how his legacy will be assessed after he hangs them up for good.
Speaking with Fight Hype, Smith went over some of the common criticisms directed at the frontrunner of his pack, shaking his head is disbelief as he went.
“Whether you love him, whether you like him, whether you hate him, this is a big accomplishment. People can say whatever they want to say, when you look back over his career he’s fought everyone.”
“Even the people that say he lost to [Jose Luis] Castillo, he fought him again. People thought the Diego[Corrales] fight was a fifty-fifty fight, and Diego was a good friend of mine. That turned out not to be the case. I mean, Jesus Chavez, I remember [Floyd] fighting him, ‘ah this is gonna be tough,’ mopped the floor with him.”
“He’s fought everybody man, and to sit here and complain now, ‘ah fight Triple-G [undefeated middleweight champion Gennady Golovkin],’ it’s just crazy stuff man and I think they won’t respect him or appreciate him until he’s gone.
“It’s sad because this is the day and age of sports we live in. He’ll never satisfy the critics. He can fight [WBA welterweight champion Keith] Thurman, beat him and they’ll be like ‘oh he wasn’t ready, he was too young.’ I don’t know what else he could do. He could fight [IBF welterweight champ] Kell Brook they’ll be like ‘oh we don’t know him. He only beat one person, came over here and beat Shawn Porter, we don’t know nothing about Kell Brook.’”
“He’s getting at that stage in his career where he’s in a no-win situation. It was Manny[Pacquiao]; dusted him away, made it look easy, and he got at fault for that, ‘oh fight him without a bum shoulder.’”
Before reminding us that after protracted negotiations he made Saul ‘Canelo’ Alvarez “look like an amateur,” Smith said he is glad Floyd is “going out on his own terms” and that he is “in the conversation as one of the best-ever.”
As a teammate and likely friend, Smith exhibits a level-headedness in defence of Floyd that detractors lack in attacking him. As a 15-year pro, he more than most will appreciate the unlikelihood of a fighter like Floyd even existing, before going on to become a landmark in the sport’s history.
His physical assets are slowly degrading as his 40th-year approaches, and still people make hitherto unheard of demands for him to jump up two divisions and face a monster like Golovkin.
That is unfair, but calling for matches against younger fighters in his own division like Thurman, Brook, Shawn Porter, or Amir Khan certainly is not. He has chosen to ignore their presence for his last hurrah, you decide if he has earned that privilege.
There was one comment that rang especially true -for reasons both positive and negative- from Smith, which I will leave you with.
“Nobody in the sport of boxing has ever done it the way he’s done it.”
