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This Saturday night, Floyd ‘Money’ Mayweather looks to increase his unbeaten record to 44-0 against Robert ‘The Ghost’ Guerrero.
As much as Mayweather would have you believe that it will be an easy night’s work for him, the general consensus is that Guerrero is not going to be a push over. ‘The Ghost’ has not been a push over for anyone in his career…
Apart from that one time he got pushed over by Gamaliel Diaz.
A loss is no bad thing though and he avenged that six months later, stopping Diaz in six rounds. Also that was back in 2005, and if we judge him on his last fight, he looked great.
He went into the fight against, the supposedly up and coming superstar Andre Berto, a total underdog. Guerrero out boxed Berto from start to finish, dropping him in the first and second rounds.
By the fourth, Berto’s eyes were beginning to shut due to the swelling, and Guerrero took the majority points decision.
Guerrero is a slick southpaw who carries moderate power, with a 51% KO ratio, stopping 18 opponents out of 31. He is called the ‘Ghost’ because of how elusive he is, with his nifty footwork and good head movement.
He also carries the good guy image, a deeply religious person who came from adversity to be on top of the world stage, whose out of the ring battles, such as his wife battling with leukemia, have been harder than those inside the ring.
Other than the Berto, names on his record he has beaten include undefeated Selcuk Aydin, brawler Michael Katsidis, wily old dog Joel Casamayor and tough gatekeeper Vincento Escobedo, all talented fighters…not elite…but talented in their own respects.
Wait a minute….slick southpaw, moderate power; nice guy…lived through adversity, relatively good record, fight before Mayweather was against Berto…
Sounds a lot like Victor Ortiz.
Ortiz was much bigger in weight though, campaigning at light welter or welterweight. Guerrero won his first title at featherweight, then super feather, lightweight and then welterweight.
Look what happened in that fight. OK, forget the ending, but do you think that it would have ended any differently had the fiasco not happened? Does anyone think Ortiz would have won after seeing those early rounds?
Ortiz promised it was his time and that he was going to come in and throw punches in bunches and put pressure on Floyd, and that Floyd struggles with southpaws and this and that…
To be fair to him, he did exactly what he said he would do, and Floyd started picking his shots and being incredibly defensive and you could almost see Ortiz slowing to fight at Floyd’s pace, and as soon as that happens it’s going to be a long night.
His corner obviously pointed this out to Ortiz before the fourth and out he went to put some hurt on Floyd. He did no damage, he tried but couldn’t hit the target, got frustrated and the rest is history.
Now I am not saying that’s going to happen in this fight, but Floyd has seen it all before.
Aside from Ortiz, If you want to talk slick, elusive southpaws who can bang, then you don’t get better experience than Zab Judah, and that’s a 2006 Judah not a 2013 Judah, who proved against Danny Garcia last week that there’s teeth in the old dog yet.
Although Judah troubled Floyd for a couple of rounds, Mayweather still found a way to win.
And that’s just what Floyd Mayweather does, he finds a way to win, he adjusts, he slowly takes control of the fight, and so far no-one has been able to stop him from doing that.
The hope for Guerrero here is that old father time is catching up with Mayweather, and his reactions are not as fast as perhaps they once were, evident in the Miguel Cotto fight as Floyd took some shots against a big puncher in Cotto.
I doubt Mayweather stops Guerrero, as ‘The Ghost’ does have a good chin and Mayweather is not a devastating puncher, but I also doubt anything other than a Mayweather points victory at the end of the night.
