Originally Posted by
Lords Gym
Height and reach advantage enhance those advantages you state here . when you have reach advantage you can play with folks at a safer distance, and thus apply the combinations , hand speed and foot speed. Floyd likes to stay out his opponents range and toy with them.. Floyd wouldn’t be enjoying that luxury vs. Williams.. I feel that Williams can match him hand speed, and foot speed. . . I see Floyd being very uncomfortable against this type of tall high volume fighter. JMO
There are portions of your argument that I agree with and parts I do not.
First, I think it's an enormous leap to say that Williams can match the hand and foot speed of Mayweather. Floyd is the fastest fighter on the planet. If Williams had Mayweather's speed to go along with a 6'1" body and 82" reach, he would be destroying every opponent in one round and would be touted as potentially one of the great fighters of all-time. This is obviously not the case. Williams has good hand and foot speed. Does he have speed that rivals Mayweather's speed? No way.
As for your argument that height and reach enhance speed advantages... of course they do. Any fighter, if given the choice, would love to go into a fight with a height and reach advantage. But just because those advantages would be taken away from Floyd, that doesn't mean all his other advantages disappear. One thing Floyd has going for him is that while he does like to use his feet, he has also been well schooled in the defensive technique of slipping punches with upper body movement, as opposed to always dodging punches by running. If you look at the best defensive fighters of recent years, they are usually the fighters who employ this style. Pernell Whitaker was IMO the best defensive fighter of the past 25 years, and is also the best comparison to Mayweather. He could stand flat-footed in front of a taller opponent and still not get hit with a single punch, because his defensive style was about upper body movement and utilizing the gloves to block punches, not about running. Mayweather employs this style as well, it's the style his father taught him from a young age. This allows him to dodge punches effictively even if he is within his opponents' punching range.
I do agree with you that a tall, high volume guy like Williams can make Floyd uncomfortable. I think you're right with that. Conventional wisdom always says that the type of fighter who gives a speed fighter like Mayweather problems is the straight-ahead brawler who will dive in and work the body. A fighter who fits this mold is someone like Hatton. I've always completely disagreed with this logic. I think a straight ahead body puncher who dives in to throw punches is the easiest type of opponent for a boxer like Mayweather, because a straight ahead body puncher is such an easy target. Someone like Mayweather can just back up and pick apart a fighter like Hatton with counter shots and uppercuts.
On the other hand, Williams doesn't need to dive in to reach Mayweather, and therefore his body type and fighting style present more problems for Floyd. An example of this matchup problem are the Forrest-Mosley fights. Mosley met his match at 147 when he got in the ring with an unusually tall and rangy welterweight. However, the big difference is that Mosley was never a good defensive fighter, and had no clue how to duck punches with upper body movement like Floyd can. That's why I think Floyd will be able to do things to Williams that Mosley could not do against Forrest. A puncher like Mosley will always eventually meet his match. The elite defensive fighter, like Mayweather, can always use his defensive skills to adjust to whatever challenge he comes across.
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