Sunday, November 06, 2011

Underdog Boxing: Floyd Mayweather - the master of stealing thunder

source: gmanews.tv


A report from ESPN’s Dan Rafael quoted Leonard Ellerbe, one of Floyd Mayweather’s advisers, saying Mayweather wants to fight “the little guy" on May 5 at the MGM Arena.

Pardon me for being a pessimist but I refuse to believe that this is true. I would rather believe that Mayweather is just unleashing one of his PR stunts or maybe one of his mind games to shake Manny Pacquiao’s concentration for his fight next week.

My first reason is that Mayweather has also pulled a stunt like this back in 2009. He came out of “retirement" and announced that he was going to fight Juan Manuel Marquez. This would have been perfectly acceptable if he did it on any other time of the year but he decided to announce this fight a few days before Pacquiao stepped into the ring against Ricky Hatton.

Mayweather of course claimed that it was pure coincidence but the boxing world knew that was not the case. He was trying to one-up Pacquiao, trying to steal his thunder, before Pacquiao’s big fight. “He could have waited two days if he wanted to fight Manny," Freddie Roach said, “but he chose Marquez who we defeated."

This for me was the ultimate sign that Mayweather is bothered by the kind of attention Pacquiao is getting. The American may try to brush him off most of the time, acting like Pacquiao is not a worthy challenger to his perceived throne but the truth is Pacquiao is in Mayweather’s head and stunts such as this one and the one in 2009 make it more obvious.

Another reason is that Mayweather has said he is willing to face Pacquiao so many times already, still we have not seen the fight yet. The newest was before Mayweather’s fight against Victor Ortiz, he openly said that Pacquiao is next on his list but immediately after the fight he backtracked and basically said that Pacquiao does not deserve a match with him because he has been dominating boxing for all these years while Pacquiao was still in the lighter weight divisions.

Mayweather has played hot and cold for so many times now and saying he wants “to make the biggest fight that is out there and to make it in May" and having a venue pencil booked is not proof that he finally wants this now. If he really wants to make this fight, he only needs to do two simple things. The first is to wait until Pacquiao-Marquez is over. The second is to talk directly with the Bob Arum and Top Rank.

We have all been burned too many times. In a perfect world, Mayweather and Pacquiao should have fought three times by now. Yet, every single time we get close to a fight, something prevents it from happening. Believe me, I want all of this to be true but my mindset right now is that I’ll only believe the Pacquiao-Mayweather fight will happen when the bell rings for round 1. - OMG, GMA News

source: gmanews.tv

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