I don't want to bother comparing him to Robinson and the really old guys because the sport was so much different bakc then. But I will say that people pretend like his resume can't be compared to Duran and Leonard and that he'd lose to each. The reality of it is that there's room to favor his resume over either and a strong case can be made that he'd beat either. I think it would be unfair not to favor him over Duran.
Except he schooled the current pfp number 1 who went on to win a title at 175 while being 36 and in the wrong weightclass, then showed up at age 38 to school the pfp number 1 not including himself. Both of these guys are going down as ATGs. I'd say he went for it, champ.
Count out the champions, future hof fighters, and top ten contenders beaten, and add in the weightclasses fought in and you'll get a different picture.
Champions are a dime a dozen today. Mayweather beating a bunch of cherry picked paper champs is about as meaningless a statistic to measure greatness by as can be.
Ok. Count out the guys who are going into the HOF or are already there and the fighters who were in the top ten.
If we take a close look at all the far greater boxers throughout history... I think Mayweather probably belongs somewhere in the 50-75 range on an All-Time list.
Same picture. His resume is inferior to many all time greats certainly the elites. I'm talking about ranking him at the top. You could make a case Mayweather belongs ahead of Ray Leonard P4P.
If you want to count them out, you'll see. For HOF fighters, pfp fighters, contenders, and champs beaten, nobody is even close in modern times except maybe Pac.
And yet Floyd was favored in each. There was no real sense of danger (despite myself trying to hype Canelo). He only suffers here because we're comparing against la crème de la crème. A quality painting vs. masterpieces. It's not so much criticism as differentiating. If we instead just asked, "How good was Floyd?", then there'd be plenty of praise. One of the best defensive fighters ever, a nightmare at 130...etc...
He was an underdog for Corrales. The odds just reflect how good he was. You can’t hold that against him, like you can’t hold his reach against him. It’s not realistic to expect a guy that small to chase Golovkin or someone. That’s what he would’ve had to do to be an underdog.
People were favoring all kinds of guys over Floyd throughout his career. Tszyu, Mosley, Cotto, Pacquiao, Margarito, Williams, etc. Apart from Corrales he never fought any of them when they were still seen as that kind of legitimate threat. You can hold that against him.
This is the crux of the issue. Floyd fans are coming at this from the laughable vantage point that we have to prove Floyd wasn’t the greatest ever, because it’s just so obvious to them. Every fighter can and will be critiqued when being compared exclusively to the best ever. That doesn’t mean we’re attacking any of them. We’re just looking for separation.