Floyd Mayweather Legacy Discussion

In terms of skill Whittaker is my number 2.

My top 10 atm is

Robinson
Whittaker
Jones
Armstrong
Duran
Leonard
Hearns
Ali
B Leonard
Hagler

 

No P4P not H2H

 

Top20, maybe top10

He should rank above all of those pretty comfortably

And where is Burley, Cocoa Kid, Ike Williams and Holman Williams on Armstrong's resume again? Why is he in your top 40 if he didn't fight them?

Where's Burley, Holman, Cocoa Kid, Charles, Marshall, on Ray Robinson's resume?

No one makes these 'he didn't fight X' on these older timers resumes yet it gets thrown at modern fighters for some reason.

 

I think very highly of Mayweather's skill set and his abilities on a H2H basis...but this post is the truth...Mayweather has picked and chose his opponents only at particular times in their careers. But with that said, Mayweather is the absolute epitome of being ringwise in and out of the ring. He is hands down the best self managed fighter in the entire history of boxing.

 

Robinson has definitely accomplished more, no doubt about that but I think in a fight prime for prime Mayweather would edge it out because of his boxing IQ and ring smarts. Robinson had big trouble with Jake Lamotta's swarming style greatly. Despite Hatton being no Lamotta, Mayweather beats these swarmers with ease he uses the check hook, lead right set up with the jab to the body.

Mayweather has handspeed probably on par with Robinson but that doesn't even matter because Mayweather has timing, and an impeccable defence combined with a great chin. Robinson's defence wasn't as good as Mayweather's but I give Robinson the edge in footwork.

 

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Floyd Mayweather belongs in the top 25. His talents/skills/abilities are as good as anyone. His acomplishments are also as good as anyone too.

What he's missing is that one big win. There's no one in his era that can match him. It wouldn't have been Pacquiao who did everything to avoid Mayweather, and only showed intrest when his career started to unwind for the payday. Mosley had a toothache. Margarito and Williams were never in a poistion to make a fight. Tzyu and Mayweather were never really at the top of 140 at the same time. He should have fought Cotto after he beat Mosley. There you haters have the one time he avoided a worthy chalenge.
He would latter fight and easily beat both Mosley and Cotto. It's fair to crtize him for fighting Judah who had just lost to Baldomir, but rember that at the time Judah was considered the only guy with a real chance to beat Mayweather.

Mayweather has put together a solid resume in terms of those he's beaten. Hernadez's only loss before losing his 130 championship to Mayweather was to De La Hoya 3 years before. There were a lot of people picking Corrales to beat him. That may be his most domiant win of his career. Castillio gave him problems, but he adjusted and won the fight, the rematch too. When he beat Gatti, Gatti was riding a 5 fight wining strek going back to 2002. Yes Baldomir had 9 losses going in to the fight as well as 6 draws, but look at his record and you'll see he got most of them very early in his career when he was still learning the sport. He hadn't lost since 98. His last draw in 02. Coming off wins over Judah and Gatti. When he fought De La Hoya he was arguebaly the best at 154. Hatton was the best at 140. People like to point out Hatton's fight with Collazo as prof that Hatton wasn't a real welterweight, but Collazo gave everyone he fought with the expetion of Mosley hell. Here's the bottom line De La Hoya and Hatton were better chalangers to him than anyone at 147 at the time would have been. Whe he beat Marquez, Marquez was considered to be top 3 in the world of boxing. Seeing what Marquez has done as a welterweight since than. Te argument that the weight issue made a difrance is weak at best. Mosley was also top 3 pound for pound. Ortiz and Cotto were both coming off big wins. Guerrero had been a champion since 06.

More importantly than anything else is that unlike anyone that you might rate above him besides Rocky Marciano and Ricardo Lopez. Mayweather never lost to anyone he shouldn't have lost to.

He's been tested and pushed. He's had his weakness exposed. He's also managed to adjust and win each and every time.

Is Mayweather the best ever? No that conversation belongs to Benny Leonard, Ray Leonard, Pernell Whitaker and Ray Robinson. If he keeps beating quility guys in the manner that he has, if he once again takes on the best at 154 most likely Alarez and wins and wins a championship espicialy against Quillin or Golvkin he will join the Big 4.

Rattings are subjective, and the fauther down you go the more nit picking there is. However if your not considering Mayweather for your top 25 your a blind romantic of the past.

 

Above Arguello & Hearns for starters. Below Hagler. He's in the Spinks-Loughran range. I have trouble putting him ahead of Spinks personally, but he's probably ahead of the latter name.

 

Some of those attempts to pump up Mayweather's opponent's are laughable.Gatti, Mosley, using a win over Pac(you know, the guy who is also blown up and small for the weight that he already fought multiple times) to justify Marquez as being somehow still at the very top of his game etc

Anyone claiming Mayweather has a win over a prime Marquez at his optimum weight range is an intellectually dishonest piece of human detritus.:yep

I like Floyd as a fighter but you can count on one hand the amount of very good prime fighters he's impressively beat since moving up from lightweight.

The very fact guys like Hatton(a fight i thought was fine at 147 as mayweahter is not big there himself and a good win, one of his post lightweight best...but HAtton was never more than a solid, but highly flawed champ, never VERY good) 154 Cotto and Mosley will no doubt get brought up to dispute that is embarassing for the money hardcore.

top 25 of all time, my girthy balls.He's not fought the opposition for that.Too many other great talents that took on a tougher field to consider.Top 50-100 is where he belongs as of now.That is a great compliment, not a diss.

 

Quality post.

 

If he got an impressive win over PAC that may have sealed a top spot but I think they missed that boat, he is very talented and has some impressive wins but none over a prime great. IMO not in the league of a Duran, Leonard, Hearns. His winning resume is better than Benitez and Prior but he did not fight the men they fought. He still has a few fights left in him but I think he would have trouble with Prior and may lose, I would bet on Duran to stop him and Leonard and Hearns as well. Floyd matches up well with Sweat Pea a very close fight and could split a few with Chavez in a trilogy or more and I may Pick Benitez over him

 

I personally think he's closing in on the top 25. I often like to compare him to Duran.

If one does that I think we can agree he didn't fight anywhere near the level of fighters Duran did. There's no SRL, Hearns, or Hagler on his list and there's not going to be. But then again there's no "no mas" or a devastating KO on his record either. But I can't imagine Mayweather fighting someone like Barkley.


The 44-0 doesn't mean that much to me. If it was 72-0 or 80-0 I'd be much more impressed. And an arguement can be made that until you lose a fight, you've never really challenged yourself enough.

Talent wise I don't think anybody would dispute he's top 25-30 so we're really just talking about resume. Yet when I watched him fight, I couldn't help but think both a prime ODLH and SSM would have beaten him.

The problem is that as good as he looks, he's hard to gauge because there just isn't the same level of competition around that there use to be. Even Trinidad, SSM, ODLH, and Forrester, while this isn't on par with the fab 4, is still much better than what's around today.

Like others have said, he really needs to beat someone who is in their prime and moving towards ATG status. Perhaps Alvarez is the guy?

 

That time at the top looks a lot less impressive when you realise he's been fighting about twice a year on average for half of it though boxed.And half the time against unimpressive fighters.

Up until he moved up to 140 i had saw little to really complain about Floyd's pro career, but after that i would much rather he had remained active and really dominated a weightclass or two, taking on all-comers.

It seemed like he might do it circa 2006-2007 at Welter having beat Judah and Baldomir and then scoring his best post-lightweight wins against Hatton and Oscar but it never really materialised.

In a stronger era he simply wouldn't have got away with his body of work and semi-retirements over the past half-decade.Not in the sense of being able to sustain the image of still being right at the top of the sport without needing to fight some real emerging potential greats at a serious disadvantage of inactivity...do what he's done in recent years then and you'd come back having to fight a Gavilan, Basilio, Graham, Robinson, Grifith, Rodriguez, Cokes, napoles, Curry, Tito etc that has been active during that time and picked up the belts.Probably resulting in you getting beat through a lack of sharpness.

What we've seen over the past years is like a poor man's version of Leonard's rightly criticised late career.Really poor if you take the Hagler win in context.mayweather couldn't even be arsed to fight Pac when he was rightly drawing in the p4p plaudits as a smaller fighter superbly jumping through the weights...when he was still looking good and had proven he could hammer run of the mill Welters\ junior welters.He fought Marquez who was looking very hittable and old having wars at lightweight and had not proven a thing above that.

Maybe not all his fault, but still it's a poor show.