Mayweather madness

[MannyP]

Manny P. you get a cool click from me, That was great how you put up heights and reach to show how Mayweather fought guys who were not exactly superior in height and reach. I have been watching some Mayweather fights on youtube and he is open to the jab.. What are the stats on common opponents?

Hey, thanks for the cc. As far as common opponents, there is only one that I'm aware of, Arturo Gatti.

The roughly four year difference in starting their pro careers created enough separation so that there were no common opponents, as far as I know anyway, on their treks through the Super Featherweight and Lightweight ranks.

Also, by the time Floyd was starting his pro career, Oscar had already made the move to welterweight.

As far as Gatti goes, I have seen both fights, and I have to say that I really don't know what kind of indicator they are. Both fighters dominated him, although in different ways. Floyd did it with pure overwhelming speed, Oscar did it with power. Also, the four years between these bouts, in my opinion, were very rough on Gatti. It's hard to say if the skills he brought with him into those bouts were truly comparable. Probably less significant, but still worth mentioning, is the fact that he fought Floyd at 140, and Oscar at 147.

One thing that I found interesting, and this is only based on my own impression of those fights, is that while Oscar was beating the tar out of him, he took it and kept fighting back. He never seemed intimidated by Oscar at all.

Against Floyd, on the other hand, Gatti seemed thoroughly intimidated. It wasn't only that he seemed incapable of effectively fighting back, which was true, but he also seemed completely demoralized and almost uninterested in doing so.

I always had a very strange impression of Gatti that night. The so-called fight till you drop warrior. Mayweather seemed to take his greatest weapon away from him that night, his heart. Maybe that is only my impression, but that's how it struck me.

Maybe what this match up boils down to for me more than anything else is the fact that Mayweather, while having great skills, has stuck mainly to the b list of opponents during his career. With the exception of Castillo, I don't believe Mayweather has every fought anyone I would describe as "world class," and that includes Corrales, a good fighter, but not an elite De La Hoya class fighter.

When De La Hoya was coming up, he fought them all. Granted, some of them were well on the way down at the time, but he did what he could to put some great names on his resume. Julio Cesar Chavez, Pernell Whitaker, Hector Camacho, just to name a few. Who has Mayweather ever fought that brings with him the credentials of any one of these fighters? Arguably, just one.

Look down the list of De La Hoya opponents a little further, even after moving up in weight, this man has took on the best, and while maybe not beating them all, was certainly competitive against every one of them. Even against Hopkins, in terms of skill anyway, until that body shot ended it.

As for Mayweather, zilch! He fought for years in the same divisions with the likes of Casamayor and Freitas, but did he ever manage to fight the best around? Nope.

Well, now he's moving up to the majors. He is finally putting it on the line against someone who can really put his skills to the test.

Mayweather may have it in him to do it, but I tend to doubt it.