It is somewhat befuddling. There are many who feel the way to deny Mayweather greatness is to place him in hypothetical impossible scenarios. To make a comparison, Floyd starting at Jr. lightweight and beating a prime future ATG jr . Middle at 37 years of age would be like asking tommy Hearns who started at welter to beat a prime Holyfield at heavyweight.
It's actually the opposite for me... Mayweather was great ... but the people who put him in these matchups are usually the one's who want to add to his greatness somehow by thinking he can win these matchup's against SRR and Ray Leonard etc. ... but i see your point
yeah I definitely wouldn’t favor him to beat those fighters in their primes and at their natural BEST weights. That’s not being realistic
Oscar was still very good and he made up for being a little but passed it by outsizing Mayweather at Jr. Middle, who was barely comfortable at 147 back then.
Bingo! If DelaHoya could "outsize" Mayweather then Hearns might be a fighter to avoid. Mayweather doesn't match up well with him. P4P I would give Mayweather an edge.
Floyd would have been in survival mode. Tommy was 6’1, with a 78” reach, with huge power. He’d have had zero respect for Floyd’s power. You saw what happened when Ray tried to box him. As great as Floyd was, he wasn’t big enough to have outboxed him. He’d have gotten caught. Ray had to switch tactics and fight him. But Floyd wouldn’t have had that option, as he didn’t possess Ray’s size, strength or firepower. It would have been a horrible stylistic match up for Floyd. Probably the worst opponent you could have given him in the history of the sport around his weight classes. He would have feared the huge right hand and he’d have had huge trouble getting past the long jab. IMHO, Floyd wouldn’t even have had a chance to have beaten him.
It's close. I would give a slight edge to Hearns. I think he had the slightly more impressive career. There is no way that Mayweather would have blitzed Duran, outboxed Wilfred with an injured hand, and given SRL all sorts of issues. The loss to Hagler means little. Mayweather would have also been beaten by Marvin.
Actually, Benitez was around Floyd’s level when he was at his best. But I know that you don’t know anything about his career. Ray was also on Floyd’s level at WW, and Tommy gave Ray a boxing lesson until Ray switched tactics and had a shootout against him. Floyd could not have replicated what Ray did, because he didn’t possess the firepower. If you want to rank Floyd higher, then be my guest. But H2H is completely different. You only have to look objectively at how their styles would have meshed. Floyd would have been backed up straight away. He’d have feared Tommy’s huge power, whereas Tommy wouldn’t have had any respect for Floyd’s. Floyd peaked at the lower weights. At WW, he was a safety first fighter for the most part, who had hand issues. Floyd was a master boxer. But Tommy was also a great boxer, and he was 6’1 with a 78” reach, with one of the greatest jabs in boxing history, with huge, one shot stopping power. There was just no way for Floyd to have won. He didn’t have the size to outbox him, and he didn’t have the strength or power to have fought him and stopped him. It’s very easy to work out.