And there he was, iconic leader of The Villain?s Club, all-time great Floyd Mayweather, dressed as The Riddler in shady grey. Nothing the former ?Pretty Boy Floyd? did to become ?Money? on the way to consideration as ?The Best Ever?, was ever the result of happenstance.
As he often said with conviction: ?Hard work! Dedication!? There is no such thing as a substitute for either in his universe, and as I watched him watch WBC/IBF welterweight champion Errol Spence Jr narrowly escape ?Showtime? Shawn Porter this past Saturday night from Staples Center in Los Angeles, ?The Truth? is, he appeared to be rekindling a look of the old ?I see something? variety.
We?ve heard about the talks of a rematch with a now WBA welterweight champion Manny Pacquiao now for about two years, as boxing flirts with the skirt of fight fans in the hopes of lifting up more PPV glory between the two legends. But this is probably subterfuge to keep their names dipped in the kind of limelight that allows others to glow in the dark. In so many ways, Spence vs Porter was a testament to what made Floyd great. Aside from preternatural gifts and innate qualities that would have made him a generational talent, Mayweather obsessed over immaculate conditioning; believing any previous version of himself was never quite good enough, serving as the basis to cross a line others could not see or even dare to approach. But Porter, a fighter not blessed with his innate skills or preternatural gifts, does see this line and is only to willing to cross it, as evidenced by a classic war with Spence that could have easily gone his way.
Going into the fight (and even after it), Spence downplayed the qualities of Porter, both commercially and technically. What he completely overlooked was the Cleveland Brown of the game?s special commitment to the mantra of ?Hard work! Dedication!? Floyd saw it too. He knows what Porter is, a man who absorbed full training camps with Manny Pacquiao in a way that never left him; as Spence seems to be a man somewhat absorbed by his success in [a training with Floyd], while leaving a few things to the right of him. Just on the eye test alone, Floyd appears to be in mint condition, and the instincts of a legendary fighter had to tell him that his former sparring partner looked like a fighter of bad habits and very beatable as a result of success and the grueling fight he?d just witnessed.
If a formidable test from former WBC welterweight champion Danny ?Swift? Garcia doesn?t loom next for ?The Truth?, I wouldn?t count out Floyd discarding a rematch with Pacquiao and deciding once and for all that the best way to put distance between his legacy and Pac?s, is by challenging and beating Spence at the improbable age of 43. It would top anything B-Hop ever did, and force Jim Lampley to come up with something beyond ?It happened!? after George Foreman eviscerated Michael Moorer. I mean folks, two fights in a row we?ve seen Spence go all 12 with fighters who?ve campaigned south of 147, while demonstrating difficulty in cutting down to welterweight.
