By Brent Matteo Alderson

Bandwagon jumpers or front-runners or what ever you call them are everywhere. You can’t drive through a neighborhood in Southern California without seeing a USC flag outside or you can’t go to a bar and talk football without running into some New England Patriot fans. Boxing fans are the same way and after Floyd Mayweather’s demolition of Arturo Gatti they’ve all seemed to jump on the bandwagon.

Well I’ve been on the Mayweather bandwagon since he turned pro and I’ve ranked him as the best fighter in the world since Roy Jone’s struggled to a decision victory in the first Tarver fight in the fall of 2003. Even though Hopkins was in the middle of one of the sport’s lengthiest title reigns, I thought that Pretty Boy Floyd’s skills along with his physical gifts were vastly superior to those of Hopkins and still feel that the only two fighters in the last fifteen years with superior or comparable skills were Roy Jones in his prime or Pernell Sweat Pee Whitaker.

Even Emanuel Steward who worked with Floyd while his father was in jail for cocaine distribution at the time of the Olympic trials felt that Floyd was the best prospect on that 96 team despite only coming away with a bronze medal. "He’s going to be better than his daddy or his uncle. He’s got stronger legs, he’s built better physically and he’s so comfortable in the ring, he grew up in it."

So it was no surprise that he was the first Olympian from that team to win a world title and I don’t think any of the other Olympian’s title winning performances were as impressive. Vargas beat Yori Boy Campas who was a seasoned pro, but whom had already been destroyed by Felix Trinidad and Jose Luis Lopez. David Reid’s win over Laurent Boudouani was impressive, but the Frenchman had been struggling as a champion, most notably in his two controversial bouts against current cruiserweight contender Guillermo Jones.

Floyd on the other hand beat won of the sport’s best champions, Genaro Chicanito Hernandez who was very underrated and probably one of the ten best 130 pound champs in the division’s history. Chicanito had never lost at 130 pounds and his only loss came against Oscar De La Hoya at Lightweight. Hernandez had beaten Azumah Neslon and a slew of other top contenders such as Carlos Hernandez during his tenure as first a WBA titlist then as a champion of the WBC.

Since the Hernandez bout in 98, which also earned him the Ring’s fighter of the year award, Mayweather has beaten an undefeated Diego Corrales, Carlos Hernandez, Jesus Chavez, Jose Luis Castillo, and an Angel Manfredy who was on a 23-fight win streak and was coming off of a stoppage victory over Arturo Gatti.

With the exception of the first fight with Castillo, Mayweather dominated everybody. So in a way it gets to me that Mayweather accomplished so much and is now just receiving those accolades based on his win over Arturo Gatti. Gatti is a ring warrior, but he’s not a great fighter and in the strictest sense of the term, never really a true world champion. At no point in time was Gatti the best fighter in his weight class. When he was the Junior Lightweight Champ, Chacanito would have won every round against the Italian Canadian. And Gatti’s claim to the WBC 140 pound title was dubious at best. You think Gianluca Branco was a top contender? Even though Mickey Ward is a credit to the game whose class epitomizes the wholesome honest moral disposition of the working class pug Ward wasn’t that good of a fighter.

Yah he had beaten a number of perennial contenders such as Emanuel Agustus, Reggie Green, Shea Neary, and Alfonso Sanchez, but the Bostonian gladiator never beat a top five guy and had lost 11 times coming into his fights with Gatti. So what I’m saying is don’t base your evaluation of Floyd on his utter domination of Gatti because Arturo wasn’t that good. There’s at least five other guys that weigh less than 147 pound that could beat Gatti up like that.

That’s what really gets me, Mayweather beats a big name and now he’s the best thing since chocolate was first discovered in the new world and supposedly has to go up 20 pounds to fight Winky Wright in order to find a challenge suitable for his out of this world talent. Give me a break! Mayweather only had four fights at lightweight and then three fights at 140-pounds against the not so frightening trio of Bruseles, Gatti, and Corley and now people are pushing him to fight Winky Wright?

Come on, people are acting like Floyd was Roberto Duran and needs to move up to find challenges because he cleaned out his divisions. Yes, Mayweather was superior to the men he fought at junior welterweight, but he never proved his superiority against the 140-pound division’s elite.

Floyd’s rapid jump in weight is one of the reason’s why I give Zab Judah a hell of a shot of knocking Floyd out in their proposed match in April. If someone offered Mayweather 7 million to fight Castillo in February at 135 pounds, Floyd could easily make the weight. He’s not even a true 140-pounder much less a welterweight. And his fight against Sharmba Mitchell was a joke, they were pretty much two junior welterweights who were contracted to fight at the welterweight limit.

Does that mean Mayweather has fought at welterweight? No, because he’s never fought a true welterweight and he’s going to be in for a surprise when he gets hit by Zab Judah and feels the power of an elite 147 pounder because Floyd hasn’t scrapped with an elite top 25 pound for pound fighter since the second Castillo fight in 2002.

The thing that irks me more than anything is that these so-called boxing experts don’t think that Judah is going to be able to challenge Mayweather. I spoke with a colleague of mine the other day and told him that Judah-Mayweather is one of the best match ups in the sport and he commented, "No it’s an easy fight for Floyd, I think he’ll take him out in four rounds." I wanted to respond, "Do you know about boxing? How new are you to the sport?" Because fans that have been around the sport for lets say at least ten years are aware of a lot more than the fact that Zab Judah got starched by Kostya Tzsyu in two rounds.

They know that Zab Judah was also a child prodigy whose father was a former world kickboxing champ. They know that Zab was considered to have so much potential and so much natural talent coming into the professional ranks that Main Events and a number of other promoters were drooling on the very thought of signing him to a pro contract. In fact Zab used to regularly spar with Pernell Whitaker prior to turning professional and even briefly appeared on an HBO pre-fight documentary piece prior to Whitaker’s fight with Wilfredo Rivera in the spring of 1996.

So again it was no surprise when Zab’s pro-career started with a sizzle and he consequently won a one sided decision over the streaking Mickey Ward for the USBA title in 98 at the age of 20 and then the IBF Junior Welterweight title that he eventually lost in his fight to Tzsyu.

The thing with Zab is that he’s one of those fighters that can do more if he wants to and sometimes seems tentative and uninspired, which is similar to how fans felt about Roy Jones when he was easily dominating lower level contenders like Derrick Harmon. Boxing enthusiasts were like "Come on, show us some fire, show us some passion."

And at times Zab has been lackadaisical as was the case in his fight with Reggie Green when hall of fame referee Author Mercante had to admonish him for not fighting hard enough. Even Bobby Goodman Vice President of Don King Productions feels that a lack of focus is Zab’s biggest weakness, "I’m confident that he’s got the skills, the speed, and the power to deal with anybody.

I don’t think Zab Judah has to take a backseat to anybody as long as he’s focused, he’s one of the best fighters in the world, pound for pound bar none." And Max Kellerman who has been one of Judah’s staunchest supporters feels as though Judah is lacking the focus to follow and implement a game plan. "Zab’s problem is that he doesn’t have a game plan. It’s not like he doesn’t have skill, but he doesn’t apply that skill with a cohesive plan of attack."

Over the course of the last two years Judah has matured not only physically, but mentally as well. He’s coming in more focused and has really been on a seek and destroy mission in there starting with his performance in the second Spinks fight, but more than that he’s finally grown into a true welterweight and you can tell by his performances. Judah practically manhandled Spinks who is still one of the 30 best fighters in the world and he obliterated Cosmo Rivera who was coming off of a long win streak.

It takes a while to grow into a new division and coming into the first Spinks fight Zab had never fought as a welterweight and he still had enough to hurt Spinks and keep the fight close. Some people might feel that the distractions associated with fighting in front of his hometown are what affected Spink’s performance in the second fight, but I think it had more to do with the fact that Judah had almost year to acclimate himself to the weight unlike Mayweather who really hasn’t had enough time to acclimate himself to 140 pounds much less 147.

Beside the natural size advantage over Mayweather, Judah hits a lot harder and has always been stronger than Floyd and even though Floyd will still have an edge in speed, his advantage in that category will be considerably less than at any point in his career. Seriously, who has Mayweather faced that’s faster than Zab? Also, when looking at fights it’s good to look at fighter’s weaknesses and strengths and Zab’s one true weakness is his chin. He’s been knocked down by Jan Bergman, Terron Millett, Cory Spinks, and was knock out by Kostya Tzsyu, but Mayweather can’t crack an egg. That’s probably the only department where he’s lacking and it’s really going to show at Welterweight.

He won’t be able to hurt Zab and Judah is going to be in there throwing bombs without worrying too much about what’s coming his way. And that’s why I think Mayweather-Judah is a great fight. I really think that if Floyd wins it that he’s going to have to work, that he’s going to have to take some punches, and that he’s going to have to show the heart of a champion to come out victorious. This fight isn’t a walk in the park as some boxing writers have suggested and I would handicap it with Maymeather being a –305 favorite, which are pretty close odds in boxing. So believe the hype around this one folks, this is a real barn-burner and believe me when I say that this will be a candidate for the fight of the year.

Random Thoughts

I don’t think Joe Mesi should ever fight again. His father should be ashamed of himself for wanting his son to fight after having suffered a serious head injury. Greed holds no bounds.

I would love to see a fight between Nicolay Valuev and James Toney just for the comic relief. It would be hilarious to watch the fat 5’9 Toney beat the crap out of the 7’0 Beast from the East.

If you guys didn’t check out the last issue of KO magazine, I did the interview with Erik Morales in Tijuana at a cantina and he talked lots of smack about Barrera so Marco and his people wanted the opportunity to voice their opinions and we hooked up at a Mexican restaurant in Los Angeles for a few hours. The interview will be out in the March issue of the Ring, which comes out on the newsstands on January 2.

I love Showtime and am looking forward to the Cruiserweight Unification bout between Mormeck and Bell. O’Neil Bell better savior his days as a champion because his days as the IBF titlist are numbered especially if he fights like he did in his last two bouts.

How many of you guys remember Alex Garcia? I remember when he was on a big win streak and turned down multi-million dollar offers to fight Foreman and Riddick Bowe and then got starched in two rounds by Mike Dixon on USA for 20 grand.

I think Larry Holmes would have dominated Evander Holyfield in his prime.

I think Kostya Tszyu is the second greatest 140-pounder in history right after Julio Cesar Chavez.

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