Quote Originally Posted by powerpuncher View Post
floyd actually has trouble when he gets to the ropes. if you watch the fighters over the years that have pushed him to the ropes (castillo, sosa, cotto, and maidana all come to mind), it makes floyd uncomfortable and he gets hit cleanly. he wants to be in the middle of the ring where he can spin out of a bad situation if he gets in trouble. pep also has this same problem which is what saddler exploited. mayweather just never fought a saddler type fighter (paul williams has the same body type so it could have been an alright comparison had they fought).
I don't think it's fair to say Floyd is uncomfortable and gets hit clean on the ropes. Maidana had him there for 12 rounds and never landed anything of real substance that hurt Floyd. We're talking about a guy who's never been dropped and we can count the number of times he's been hit with a punch that hurt him on one hand.

I don't know if I agree about Floyd never fighting a Saddler-type fighter. What about Diego Corrales? Corrales was a tall power puncher (33-0 with 27 KOs at the time). Willie Pep was 5'5'' and Saddler was 5'8'' - a 3 inch advantage. Floyd was 5'8'' and Diego was 5'11'' - again, a 3 inch advantage. I think Corrales was very comparable to Saddler in terms of size, style, power, and the height advantage held over Floyd as opposed to the height advantage Saddler had on Pep.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IpKHFZ6ixKs

Look at that. Pep is fast but gets absolutely mauled by body shots and dropped in the corner in the first round. Pep is the classic slickster, he's great at avoiding those bad areas but when he got in them he had no idea what to do.

You contrast that with what Floyd did to Corrales, and I think anyone should be able to see the difference. Corrales got Floyd up against the ropes and corner and landed nothing clean.