Quote Originally Posted by wacko3205
Quote Originally Posted by BoomBoom
Mayweather is his most vulnerable now. Im not saying he is washed up or an old fighter cause he is not. But since around the time he left Lightweight he has fought a lot differently. Of course he has made adjustments because of the weight and lost some speed, but there are other things I have noticed. He backs himself to the ropes more and more every fight. He gets away with it because he is that talented and elusive, but Its not something he used to do.
I hate to cut half your post in half...but I wanted to touch on this & discuss it more...because I have been seeing more & more people saying this...& I just don't get it.

I think that Floyd has actually gotten better with his age & weight.

Floyd's kind of like Hopkins in the fact that he's so gifted defensively...he's rarely been hurt...if ever. I don't get the idea that he's fighting that differently because I just believe that he's got a boxing brain that keeps him continuously adapting to each opponent that he faces.

He looked fantastic against Hatton...a lot better than I expected him to look. Laying on the ropes is something that Floyd has always done...but YES...he does it a hell of a lot more now...but I think that it's the smarter way for him to fight at the higher weight. He crabs up in his shell & picks shots in between his opponent's onslaughts.

I hate to sound like a ball juggler here...but it's hard to pick against someone that's so close to being a perfect fighter...defensively at least.
Great point Wacko.. and I think another reason it's hard is because of something that i think we really don't put into perspective..

And that is the fact that we've never really seen Floyd desperate.. We've never seen him at a point where he had to really come back in a fight, or get up from a knock down and get into offensive mode.. Mayweather sits back and counter punches and studies the hell out of you so that when he does punch, he knows he will connect.. At the end of the Ricky fight, somewhere around the 8th round or so, we saw Floyd in offensive mode.. he was using his JAB and he was throwing combinations of body and head shots from all sorts of angles and he was overwhelming Hatton.. I think it's scary to think that we've never seen Floyd with his back against the ropes (figuratively) having to pour on some offense to win fights.. So besides the first fight against JLC (which is the fight he was probably in the most danger), and possibly the Oscar fight (split decision), I'm gonna go out and say we really haven't seen Mayweather have to use all of his arsenal in a number of fights.. and this makes it hard to gauge who/what style could beat him because we always see him act well to adversity.