What about the fight plans of his opponents in recent fights, Oscar de la Hoya and Ricky Hatton? On another forum I saw several guys saying that Floyd is 'shameful', and DISRESPECTS his fans by going into fights with the PLAN of fighting what would be because of the style, a boring fight (if you're a non-boxing fan that is, just a sports fan). Of course we know that the fight with Hatton ended up being very exciting, but in terms of a shameful fight plan they were more talking about the Baldomir and Oscar fight. But what gets me, is personally I feel that OSCAR's fight plan was shameful, and so was Ricky's. Oscar goes in with a fight plan it seems of boxing flat footed until he can get on the inside, then FLURRY enough times per round to STEAL said round. Many will probably disagree with this, but I think Oscar is a good enough fighter mentally to make adjustments mid-fight. IF he really went in there thinking he could knock Floyd out throwing those combinations of body punches up against the ropes, then he would have made an adjustment and tried something else. I really think Oscar's game plan was to steal rounds though, and win a decision. He thought the judges would be disgusted by Floyd's fight plan of not engaging Oscar, and would rather side with the fans (who cheered wildly every time Oscar threw lots of punches within a small frame of time..) then score for Floyd! This of course backfired on him, but I really think this was his fight plan. As for Ricky, his fight plan was to do what he did to Kostya Tzyu. I'm not saying EVERYTHING that Hatton does is cheating, but to win a fight more on mauling, wrestling, rabbit pounches, possiblly low blows, hitting and holding, the whole 'hook and hold' ****, etc etc.. - is shameful. Much moreso than going in with a fight plan that might end up boring. To the above paragraph I'm sure people are going to say "But Mayweather used his elbows!", well yeah. But are you honestly going to say Mayweather trained for months with the intent (the whole damn time) of causing Ricky some DISCOMFORT by using his elbows to keep Hatton off of him. YEAH RIGHT. Anyway I'm not using this thread just to complain about Ricky or Oscar, so fans of Ricky and Oscar this is not the place to complain about me, because thats not what I'm trying to do. It just really bugged me that these people were saying Floyd was disrespectful of his fans by trying to WIN more than trying to be EXCITING. So what does ESB think?
I think for the most part Floyd fans don't have a problem with the way he fights his fights because they want to see him win. I've rooted for fighters that fought "boring" but effective and it didn't matter too much because I wanted them to win. Those who do not like Mayweather will say he's disrespectful in that way because they on a personal level may dislike him and have it overshadow everything else. He's a smart fighter, as he says, and being exciting sometimes takes stupidity, which may be out of his style. I'm not really a Mayweather fan, but I've seen fighters that fight far less exciting fights and don't see any real problem with it because that's just how they fight.
Well Buddy La yeah, its pretty obvious that Floyd's actual FANS won't be bothered by most of his fights. I'm really just talking about one of the things his uh, un-fans complain about. Though you seem to be saying that they're just haters, thats it? I guess I could buy that.
