21 years ago today: "Pretty Boy" Floyd Joy Sinclair Mayweather vs. James Avery "Chico" Quawrells Jr.

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IB funfact: bet most of you didn't realize that "Diego Corrales" is a made-up name. When his biological father James Quawrell married his mother, Olga Ybarra, he asked her what his name would be in Spanish and was amused by her best guess as to a close approximation. Ybarra, who is to my knowledge American of mixed black and Mexican descent, would later remarry to and take on the surname of Ray Woods, stepfather and longtime corner man to Chico. While he was erroneously reported by contemporaneous boxing news outlets as being "half Colombian and half Mexican", this is probably a confusion stemming from a combination of his birthplace of "Columbia, South Carolina" with his Latino sounding name leading many to assume his biological sire hailed from the South American country instead of the USA state capital. So he is ethnically, in reality, at most, a quarter Hispanic and was always pretty much just a black American dude - much as the other guy who performed in a ring and was associated with the nickname "Chico" in the nineties, Scott Hall, was really just some gringo (taking inspiration for his Razor Ramon character from Al Pacino's performance as Cuban gangster Tony Montana in Scarface, if anyone wasn'y aware).

This performance - a rare bell to bell domination of an undefeated, p4p ranked, and proven fighter - is testatement not only to Floyd Jr.'s own incredible prowess in his prime but to his uncle Roger's genius as trainer. Easy in hindsight to say that Diego, to Floyd, was a gift-wrapped stylistic foil - but when they met there was plenty of uncertainty in both press row and the streets as to which of them would emerge to stake a claim on the best pound for pound in the sport. You can hear the commentator midway into the 6th muse that his gameplan, made publicly known ahead of time in a brazen show of confidence, was to close in and engage just enough in the first half to bait & enrage Corrales, making him open up and expend precious energy on counters he is made to miss while being fed a steady diet of straight rights in the mush - all while planning to stand in the pocket and force a brawl on a tiring and weak-legged Chico in round ten (which is the very round in which Mayweather in fact stopped him). Credit is due to Diego himself for even making it that far, as many refs might've waved it off after the disastrous seventh, the round after the commentator's unwitting prognostication, where he was dropped thrice. He rallied admirably in round 8, perhaps getting the closest he would all night with some bombs pitched forward on the ball of each foot - but he still lost that frame, as well as the ninth despite the broadcast team remarking that PBF had "taken it off". He did, in fact, take it off, relatively speaking, in terms of his offense, reducing it to a bare minimum output to score points - but still won it, before closing the show bang on schedule to Roger's designs.

 

Can't say Hatton was as dominant a performance as Corrales, since Ricky did win a consensus round on all three official judges' cards (the 5th, as well as on the preponderance of fan scorecards as seen on the aggregated EyeOnTheRing database) whereas Diego received just one share from a single overruled judge. I know most people don't agree with my view that Canelo got shut out, but to date in 8+ years since nobody has ever been able to persuade me that a single no-debate compulsory round for Álvarez exists in that fight. What all three have in common is that all were prime, all were undefeated, all were top-10 ranked pound for pound in the world by Ring Magazine*, and they were all come-forward guys that were (at least ahead of their matches) supposed to be potentially 'dangerous' to Mayweather by one stylistic rationale or another.

*Canelo was Ring #9 p4p, Hatton was Ring #8 p4p, and Chico was Ring #5 p4p.


In terms of PPV buys, winner's purse, and surface importance to legacy - all three were subservient to both the DLH and Pacquiao victories. But a fine few feathers in his cap nonetheless.


If you want my opinion, this version of him (prime super feather & lightweight "Pretty Boy") was superior to both the "Money" that beat Canelo and the latter-day welter "PBF" that defeated Ricky almost exactly midway between them. So yes, of all three performances, he shone the brightest here.