Bye, Felicia: Retrospective Glance @ "Pretty Boy" Floyd Mayweather Jr.

Let's dissect his professional career in tripartite and rate him in key areas during each period.

1. Up-and-coming, youthful, 1990's super featherweight Mayweather (peak reflexes and speed, more aggressive than he would be in later years: 27-0 with twenty stoppages)
2. Middle-career, prime, aughts lightweight & welterweight Mayweather (more seasoned, taking on bigger men, developing into a primarily defensive boxer: 12-0 with five stoppages)
   
3. Latter-day, intermittently appearing, post-retirement Mayweather of the last half-decade: 10-0 with just one stoppage)

Rate each version of PBF in the proscribed six categories of general characteristics, and the four basic types of punch - all on a 1-10 scale. (half-integers permissible)



Mayweather I

Power 8.5/10

Hand Speed 9/10

Movement 7.5/10

Aggressiveness 8/10

Ring IQ 7/10

Work-rate 7.5/10


Jab 8/10

Hook 6.5/10 (used to slap with it, through Corrales)

Right cross/lead 9/10

Uppercut 7/10




Mayweather II


Power 7/10

Hand Speed 8.5/10

Movement 9/10

Aggressiveness 6.5/10

Ring IQ 8.5/10

Work-rate 7/10


Jab 9/10

Hook 7.5/10

Right cross/lead 9/10

Uppercut 7.5/10




Mayweather III


Power 5.5/10

Hand Speed 8/10

Movement 9/10

Aggressiveness 5/10

Ring IQ 9.5/10

Work-rate 5.5/10


Jab 9/10

Hook 8/10

Right cross/lead 9/10

Uppercut 8/10



Some values trended up, some down, and some had little fluctuation over his nineteen years earning a living in the ring. Each version had different strengths and weaknesses even though his core style remained largely unchanged from 1996 until 2015, with just minor tweaks made to compensate for both increasingly stiffer competition (and being more routinely undersized) and diminishing returns on his exemplary gym-rat status as certain of his natural abilities began to gradually wane.

Mayweather I, by far, had the fan-friendliest style and was perhaps the most athletic, explosive, and prone to fire in combination, and was at his body's most comfortable, natural weight - but only fought serious opponents from Pep on, with about half a dozen elites faced.

Mayweather II broke out to become a PPV star and established a very strong resume, although his in-ring style became more risk-averse while the manufactured persona he used to help become that PPV star began turning some fans off, the confluence of these facts making him someone people tuned into with the hopes of seeing him defeated and humbled.

Mayweather III picked up the baton from his prior self and stretched elements of him out to nearly-caricature proportions, with the "flashy and flamboyant" heel bombast marked by the switch in moniker from "Pretty Boy" to "Money", and the part-timer status, and the growing perception of cherry-picking and deck-stacking making him perhaps the sport's most hated top pound for pound fighter since Jack Johnson.



Now the nineteen-year era is over, and we are very doubtful to see a Mayweather IV. At best, maybe a one-off appearance in 2016 if the Khan vs. Pacquiao fight comes to fruition and yields a clear victor in extremely dominant fashion one way or the other.


He departs with a dash more humility than what his personal brand has made infamous, even distancing himself in his allegedly final post-fight interview from his "TBE" comments of the last few years. Now his legacy is the stuff of the "Classic Boxing" domain, for nerds of pugilism to analyze in perpetuity. This is a relief both to proponents of Mayweather (of whom many feel that current biases and the prevalence of "haters" muddy the waters in terms of appropriately rating his place in history, feeling the passage of time will be kinder to him as subsequent generations of boxing historians treat him more fairly) and to all of those bemoaning his "cancerous" influence on the sport and eager to close the book on an era marked by "should haves" with a steep gulf between high expectations placed on a longtime p4p #1 and the bitter disappointments of reality falling short of those expectations.

Once his 48th professional opponent follows suit and retires himself, we as boxing fans can truly begin a new chapter without a bottleneck of speculation, criticism and pedantry of two men choking the life from discussion of the game at the exclusion of its several thousand other active practitioners. :good In the meantime, let's begin to place the one that actually has tendered official resignation in historical context and, now that it has ended, break up and deconstruct his campaign into separately digestible parts to be compared and contrasted with each other as is often done with past greats... and do so with fair & objective minds no longer polluted by emotions - or expectations & standards - running high. (Khan fanatics, you're exempt, nobody expects you to be reasonable)

 

Wow, never heard that before!

I can tell by this fresh and insightful reply that you are clearly "over it", no longer beset with negative emotions bubbling to fore whenever the man's name is mentioned. :yep

So, that being the case, would you kindly :readthre: and compare the nascent, secondary and tertiary versions of the man and rate his relative abilities in each period?

 

The seven-year event?