By Chris Robinson
You can forgive trainer Roger Mayweather for not being overly-excited amidst the pre-fight madness of his nephew Floyd’s bout with Miguel Cotto Saturday night. The MGM Grand will play host to the Mayweather-Cotto ‘Ring Kings’ pay-per-view extravaganza and while the city of Las Vegas is buzzing over the event, it’s business as usual for Roger.
Roger has been in Floyd’s corner on the grandest of stages, including his showdowns with Oscar De La Hoya, Ricky Hatton, Shane Mosley, Zab Judah, and the likes, yet he seems to see a difference in his preparation this time around.
“Camp is good. Floyd is ready to go,” Roger would tell me recently. “This is the sharpest he’s been.”
Elaborating further, Roger would instantly bring up Floyd’s January 2001 performance against then-champion and the late Diego Corrales. On that night against the lanky and dangerous Corrales, Mayweather would put on a virtuoso performance, boxing effortlessly as he dropped Diego five times before his corner opted to end the fight late in the tenth round.
Reflecting back to that evening, Roger still seems befuddled how people actually gave Corrales a shot heading into the fight.
“I knew Floyd was on time with Diego Corrales,” Roger would state. “People were talking about how Diego Corrales was going to beat Floyd. The performance that Floyd put on with Corrales is the greatest performance that I’ve ever seen in boxing. Thinking, boxing, that is the greatest performance I ever seen him have.”
Never one to be overly-impressed, Roger let his guard down a bit in offering up some admiration to his kin.
“I can’t see no performance that’s better than that,” Roger continued. “I’ve seen a lot of other good performances, but I can’t see a performance that’s going to put him over that fight with Diego Corrales. He did everything he needed to do, he countered him well, he dropped him five, six times and winded up stopping him at the end. He closed the show the way he was supposed to.”
The fight had some drama surrounding it because of the pre-fight tension that had existed between young Mayweather and his father Floyd Sr. Despite the rocky relationship between the two at the time, Senior would be in attendance for the fight and was spotted embracing his son after the bout in an emotional scene.
Asked if he paid attention to the family rift at the time, Roger seemed indifferent.
“Not really. I don’t worry about that,” Roger said. “Him and his father are going to have problems and that’s part of life. Everybody has problems, but I don’t really get in the mix of what him and his father do. It don’t stop me from doing anything. My thing is that it happens. It happens with father and son. It happens with mother and daughter.”
It would be hard to except the same kind of dominance from Floyd this weekend give how well-rounded of a fighter Cotto is and how well-prepared he will be for the fight. Still, Roger feels that everything lies in Floyd’s hands.
“Cotto is going to bring it,” Roger would state. “He’s going to bring his best fight to Floyd. All Floyd’s got to do is adapt to what he’s got to do. Floyd understands boxing. He knows all about boxing. He knows what he’s got to do better than anybody. I believe that’s going to be the case.”
