Favorite Mayweather Tricks from the Guerrero fight

Very solid, clinical performance from Floyd tonight. It was a pleasure to watch. Shame about his hand, I felt he could have gotten the stoppage.

My favorite tactics:

-Being able to knock the right jab down and shoot his own over the top. Mayweather has always been really good at shutting a southpaw jab down, and fighters often make the mistake of pawing with him. He will out-paw you, and spear the jab right over yours. Without that jab, Guerrero seemed to have a very hard time getting anything else off. No lead left hands, few straight rights to the body, few right hooks downstairs. This was a very similar process to the Ward-Dawson fight, in which Dawson was very reluctant to throw anything without his lead hand behind it. It also allowed Floyd to measure the distance uninterrupted and set up the rest of his shots.

-Early on Floyd was timing the right where Guerrero's head was going to be. Dipping your head towards your rear hand against an opposite-stance fighter is a liability, but you can get away with it if you dip low enough (as Mayweather often did.) Guerrero however would constantly move his head towards his left right into the right hand.

-Floyd made great use of circling to his right. With the right jab neutralized, the left wasn't really a threat, and he repeated that right hand lead + ducking out maneuver over and over again. He maintained range well enough that any lunging lefts Guerrero did throw were out of range. In terms of footwork, Floyd often had his lead foot inside as he threw with Guerrero's left and pushed off forward, but also was able to get his foot on the outside to neutralize the left by widening his stance and stepping forward as he threw. These are all tricks from the Ortiz fight.

-As soon as Floyd established the right hand upstairs and downstairs, I knew it was over. Guerrero was unable to anticipate which one was coming, and took some real punishment from those shots. Sometime in the mid round, I remember the exact sequence, where Floyd landed a partially blocked right upstairs, landed it hard downstairs, then angled his body and looked straight at Guerrero's body as if to land it again (I was like uh oh it's a trap) and surprised him with a hard right hand up top. He looped it around the guard several times as well. Veteran tactics Guerrero was just not ready for.

-The few uppercuts Floyd did land were ace. I wish he threw more of them but he was able to use the right to catch Guerrero as he was coming in, and shoot the left uppercut under Guerrero's lead arm while coming forward.

-Floyd didn't waste time trying to fight Guerrero's fight on the inside. All he had to do was clinch hard, shell up, and throw when the two separated. This is when the left hooks started coming out, once Guerrero tried mauling desperately. Left hooks to the body, left hooks up top. We didn't see that many since Floyd made it a point to hang back in this fight, but he threw them at the right moments.