By Jack Sumner
At thirty-six years of age, after a long lay-off, a jail stint and observations of his supposedly shopworn legs, Floyd Mayweather Jr outclassed Robert Guerrero on Saturday night producing another artful display of elusive, effective boxing.
Mayweather dominated from the opening bell and after getting to grips with Guerrero in the early exchanges, pulled away from his challenger as the fight progressed and the rounds tallied up in favour of the man known as ‘Money’. Guerrero ate his money’s worth of straight right hands and missed wildly with his own currency, as the world’s highest paid pugilist continued to slip and smother punches and land with hurtful, accurate shots en route to an easy $32 million.
Going into the fight many had predicted Mayweather’s downfall, highlighting the handful of times he was caught by Miguel Cotto one year ago, as well as the intervening two months spent in incarceration which would no doubt accelerate his decline. Guerrero was a southpaw too and a pressure fighter – two distinctions that had been problematic to Mayweather in the past – and the 29-year-old was also in his physical prime, blending a recipe for some to casually forecast Floyd’s first loss.
None of which came into the equation as Mayweather barely lost a round, winning by unanimous decision to improve his unbeaten record to 44-0. The scorecards however were a little closer than the action seemed, all by the reckoning of 117-111, with each judge scoring three rounds for ‘The Ghost’.
Julie Lederman and Jerry Roth both had the Gilroy, California native taking the first, whilst Duane Ford saw the opener for Floyd. A closely contested three minutes were punctuated with few scoring shots, but the clean punches that were landed came from Mayweather.
Guerrero’s gameplan was clearly based around roughhouse tactics, getting to Mayweather on the inside and imposing himself physically, taking the fight to Floyd as the aggressor. Whilst he enjoyed moments of success throughout the first two rounds however, by round 3 he was chasing Mayweather’s shadow, often left punching air.
Floyd would slip off the ropes or out of a corner, bewildering his opponent and in the centre of the ring he would counter with his trademark accuracy. That was the pattern of events almost every round with a cut opening by Guerrero’s eye in the eighth, perhaps the most one-sided three minutes of the fight in which Mayweather rocked The Ghost with a number of hard power shots.
At that stage it looked as though Floyd was on for the stoppage, but in the final rounds he was content to box and move his way to the landslide points win. In his post fight interview Mayweather revealed he had hurt his right hand, citing the injury as the reason for not ending the fight inside the distance.
No wonder it hurt given the number of times it connected flush with Guerrero’s face, with Floyd landing a remarkable 60 percent of his power punches on the night. Guerrero could only land with 19 percent of his overall punch count, a statistic owing to Floyd Mayweather Sr perhaps, who assumed head trainer duties in the build-up to the fight as his brother Roger took a back seat for the first time in thirteen years.
With the first victory of his six fight Showtime deal now under his belt, Mayweather has five more appearances to add the finishing touches to his legacy. Providing the hand injury isn’t serious he next plans to fight on September 14th, Mexican Independence Weekend, with Mexico’s Saul ‘Canelo’ Alvarez the biggest potential bout on offer.
