Where other fighters have a tool kit at their disposal, Floyd Mayweather has an entire Ace Hardware store?
?You have competition every day because you set such high standards for yourself that you have to go out every day and live up to that.??Michael Jordan
?For some time now, Floyd Mayweather Jr. has been considered the best pound-for-pound fighter in the world,? proclaims the BWAA. ?This past year he strengthened that claim by defeating Robert Guerrero and ?Canelo? Alvarez. As a result, the Boxing Writers Association of America has voted Mayweather as its 2013 ?Fighter of the Year.? This is the second time that Mayweather has won the award in his illustrious career, having previously been voted BWAA ?Fighter of the Year? in 2007. The award is named after the legendary Sugar Ray Robinson.?
I?m willing to concede that Mayweather is the best of the current crop. Where other fighters have a tool kit at their disposal, he has an entire Ace Hardware store. A ring genius, boxing?s answer to chess grandmaster Magnus Carlsen, a defensive technician the likes of which we haven?t seen since the great featherweight champ Willie Pep, who graced the squared circle with his august presence 241 times over the course of 26 years, an average of about nine fights a year. And yet somehow not recognized by the BWAA. Well, he was only 5?5?, so maybe they didn?t see him down there.
Fine. Not only fine?downright dandy. But what was so special about Mayweather?s 2013? Out of the year?s 365 days, ?Money? didn?t fight for 363 of them. And on the two days he did fight, he faced guys?Guerrero on May 4 and Alvarez on September 14?who had as much chance of beating him as world?s strongest man Brian Shaw, at 6?8? and 415 pounds, would have taking first place against Fred Astaire in a cheek-to-cheek with Ginger Rogers.
And what of his 2007, when he was first named Fighter of the Year? His opponents that year were Oscar De La Hoya in May, Ricky Hatton in December, and?oh, how silly of me. After all, we did reach that sacrosanct two-fight-per-year limit, didn?t we?
Four fights, two Sugar Rays. Oh me, oh my, I?m a fool for you, Baby.
The old gray mare that is boxing ain?t what she used to be many long years ago. Fifty years ago, the BWAA awarded its 1963 Fighter of the Year award to Emile Griffith, who actually earned it the old-fashioned way, by fighting for it. And what of the indeed legendary Sugar Ray Robinson, after whom the award was named? He won his in 1950, a year in which he entered the ring 19 times.
Mayweather was 36 in 2013. When Robinson turned 36, in 1957, he lost his middleweight crown to Gene Fullmer by unanimous decision at Madison Square Garden on January 2, won it back from Fullmer by fifth-round KO at Chicago Stadium on May 1, and lost it again, in Ring?s Fight of the Year, to Carmen Basilio by split decision at Yankee Stadium on September 23.
Fullmer was awarded his BWAA in 1961, the year he decisioned Sugar Ray for the NBA middleweight title. He also decisioned Florentino Fernandez, despite a fractured elbow, and kayoed Benny Kid Paret, both title matches. Basilio won the accolade in 1955 and 1957. In ?55, he twice stopped Tony DeMarco for the welterweight title, the second time in Ring?s Fight of the Year. In ?57, he stopped Johnny Saxton in a welterweight title bout. He also stopped tough Harold Jones, as well as decisioned Robinson.
Come on, everybody, follow that bouncing ball and sing along with Mitch:
Oh, the old gray mare, she ain?t what she used to be, Ain?t what she used to be, ain?t what she used to be. The old gray mare, she ain?t what she used to be, Many long years ago.
