Bouncing back from a loss can be a daunting task for any athlete in any sport. Perhaps especially so for those who don’t get much practice at it.
In the case of the young fighter who walked into a Las Vegas ring exactly 15 years ago Tuesday, his previous loss had been one of the few defeats in a long and fruitful amateur career. But the victory he was about to savor would be the first in a long series of them that would include five championships in as many divisions, one of the most extraordinary success stories in boxing.
Fifteen years ago, a 19-year-old Olympic bronze medalist named Floyd Mayweather Jr. made his professional debut a little more than two months after his last official loss to date, which came at the hands of Bulgaria’s 27-year-old Serafim Todorov in the semifinals of the 1996 Atlanta Olympic Games, by a meager margin of 10-9 in a fight that was dominated by the young American fighter. The always-controversial Olympic-style scoring had been blamed for another injustice, but Mayweather was now on his way in a venue where his blazing speed, impeccable defense and underrated power would stake him to an unimpeachably decisive victory.
