Floyd Mayweather, Jr. boasts a record of forty-one wins with no loss nor draw, inclusive of 60.98% knockouts. Quite impressive!
But, do not expect knockout win(s) anymore to add his record.
Mayweather, Jr. must have convinced himself to follow the path of Willie Pep, the featherweight champion from 1942 to 1948 and from 1949 to 1950. Pep was a graceful, dancing fighter who kept his opponents off balance and threw only enough punches to win. He scored 165 victories by decision in 242 career contests. In the same manner as Maxie Rosenbloom, the light heavyweight champion from 1930 to 1934, won 186 of his 299 career bouts on the scorers’ cards. But unlike Rosenbloom and Pep, Mayweather, Jr. is not a weak puncher but not a strong one either. He is simply a consummate defensive fighter just like the two.
One thing for sure, what Mayweather, Jr. wants to avoid is to displease the odds-makers: another likely biggest upset in boxing history. One may remember, the biggest upset occurred when Buster Douglas scored a tenth-round knockout against previously undefeated champion Mike Tyson in February 1990. Record shows Douglas was 50-1 underdog at the time. To this history, Mayweather, Jr. knows well of several surprises in boxing. It starts from the record of his father. Yes, he knows well how his father, Floyd Mayweather, Sr., felt when the latter tasted the first defeat and knockout loss in the hands of Tyrone Phelps in 1975 in Baltimore, Maryland, and then came another devastating TKO in the hands of Sugar Ray Leonard in the tenth round. Before the stoppage, Mayweather, Sr. was down twice in the eighth round.
Yes, Mayweather, Jr. knows not as a first eye-witness of these two events but through the eyes of the aging fighter from Bronx, New York. The narrative fear emanates from them seeing the fast hands and power of Manny Pacquiao which are reminiscent of Leonard’s of the golden days in boxing just before the latter was defeated by unanimous decision to Terry Norris in 1991 and a brutal knockout by Hector Camacho in the fifth after six years of no bout(s) on record.
Mayweather, Jr. may have internalized all these facts into his bones.
