Jeff Mayweater on Floyd-Ortiz, Pacquiao & Steroids, Williams-Lara and Wlad-Haye
“Once Floyd gets into training camp he’s going to be focused, he’s going to be hungry, and Victor Ortiz is going to be in trouble!”
His views on Celestin Caballero’s controversial decision loss against WBA featherweight champion Jonathan Victor Barros:
“My view is probably just like almost everyone else. I mean I don’t know what’s going on with that. It’s even like with the Paul Williams fight. I even think Celestino was winning better than that one because he dropped the guy twice and then he probably beat him in another five rounds. It was a complete highway robbery and it was a very, very empty feeling once we got on the plane that we worked so hard because we had a great camp. We worked extremely hard on all of the things from the prior fight against Litzau that hindered the performance and everything else. We made sure we stayed away from those things and we had a great camp and we tried to do everything right. He did his job inside the ring, but unfortunately the judges make the decision.”
On whether Celestino Caballero went into the fight with Barros believing he would need a knockout to win:
“Well I don’t think that any fighter should actually have to think that way. I think that boxing is a sport where at the end of the day the judges make the decision, but realistically if they’re honest people they’re going to do what’s right, and no fighter should be put in a situation where they have to knock a person out because there’s a great chance you’re not going to knock everyone out. So I mean I think that in itself, having that mindset, not only does it negate your game plan but it puts yourself in a position where you put yourself at great risk where you feel that you have to knock a person out, because in order to knock someone out you have to be in a position to get knocked out yourself. At the end of the day, hopefully you can get the right judges in place who are going to make the right decisions.”
His views on whether decisions like Barros-Caballero and Williams-Lara are bad for boxing:
“Yeah I think it really, really hurts the sport because it’s almost as though now, it’s kind of like what you said. Now you have to go into a fight thinking that you can’t win unless you knock the person out and that’s not fair. Don’t get me wrong, it’s just right now you’ve had several fights that had very bad decisions, but at the same time this has been going on forever. I mean it’s just a part of boxing and sometimes when it happens back-to-back, back-to-back, then it becomes a broader issue because everybody is taking notice and any true boxing fan is like wow! And that’s kind of like myself. After I watched the Williams fight I was like what’s wrong with these judges? It was so blatant. Sometimes you get caught up in the commentary of the fight and sometimes it’s not as bad, but last night was very bad and I think the Celestino fight was really bad. The other fight I didn’t really see, but those were two very blatant bad decisions.”
His views on Paul Williams’ controversial victory against Erislandy Lara:
“ The one thing that was interesting to me was first of all, Paul Williams and his team were confident about saying they don’t have to change anything. How are you not going to change anything when you just got knocked out? You got knocked out cold! So you need to make some adjustments. You need to think about making some adjustments. If you go out there and you get knocked out and you know how you got knocked out, you’re not going to try to figure out some type of game plan to negate what happened because this guy doesn’t do the exact same thing Serio Martinez does? He didn’t have the power to finish him, but he hit him way more than Martinez did. Him and his team they said they don’t need to make any adjustments. They said he just got caught with a punch. Of course he got caught with a punch, but once you guys have seen that fight and you know what happened in that fight, I think that would be time to start working on something to try and stop that from happening. I didn’t understand that.
Also what was awful interesting to me was Roy Jones being so candid about Paul Williams’ career needing to be over. I said wait a second! Not you? The same you who has been knocked out four times brutally way after the Roy Jones that everybody knows and was a great fighter. I mean that Roy Jones is a long gone. To me, for him to be a commentator, I mean he was being so unfair to Paul Williams who actually didn’t get knocked out! I mean he was getting caught with shots, and so on and so forth, but the guy only had two losses. But here it is, you’re in the twilight of your career and you’re still trying to fight. I mean I would think that one of the commentators would say to him you’re career is still going on and it should have been over a long time ago. So I mean that in itself is interesting to me.”
On whether there was anything that surprised him during Wladimir Klitschko’s lopsided victory against David Haye:
“Not really, because to be honest I was one of those people who was never sold on David Haye. I mean David Haye was a guy who was a great marketing genius because he was a guy that came from nowhere. First of all, even at cruiserweight he never beat anybody that I ever heard of. Then at heavyweight he had all the right packaging. He was a good looking guy, well spoken, charismatic, but the one thing is this. As a heavyweight he never really beat anybody who was worth anything. He beat John Ruiz who was way, way past his prime. He beat Monte Barrett who was a fringe contender and he got dropped by him. Then he fought Valuev and that guy could never fight. He was just huge and he got beat by Holyfield when he was 45 years old! Then the fight with Audley Harrison, that wasn’t even a fight! Audley Harrison didn’t even throw a punch. But he got into the minds of people because so many people are tired of the Klitschkos, and because of that they just threw their support to David Haye. They didn’t want to support the Klitschkos are be a fan of the Klitschkos because they were just so dominant and they kind of have that boring style. They are proven. They both are proven. They’ve been in with the best fighters in the division and both brothers have been in with some of the same guys. It’s just one of those situations that once you become too dominant, people start to gravitate towards something else because they won’t change. They want to see this situation come to an end. Like I said, I was never sold on David Haye and I never thought David Haye had a chance at all. So basically what I saw was actually true. David Haye talked the talk but once he got in there all he wanted to do was survive.”
His views on Mickey Bey Junior’s recent victory against Alejandro Rodriguez:
“I think that Mickey has a great talent and I think that Mickey should have already been a world champion. I mean he beat these guys who are actually becoming stars in boxing. He’s already beaten them. He beat them as an amateur. He beat Andre Dirrell, he beat Marcos Maidana, he beat Brandon Rios, and all three of these guys are champions and not only champions but great champions who are respected. Mickey kind of made the wrong turns here and there and basically it ended his career. Now here it is he’s 28 years old, and he’s still a prospect and you can’t be a prospect at 28. So he’s in a situation where something needs to happen for him pretty soon. I think he still has the talent but he just needs the opportunities. He needs more showcases like he had on ESPN on that night, because when it’s on TV that’s when it counts. That’s when people start to look at you and say hey, this guy can do this and this guy can do that. Now it’s one of the windows now where the window of opportunity has gotten a lot smaller, because he can’t afford a setback. So he has to keep winning and keep winning, and hopefully he’ll get that title shot.”
![Rico Verhoeven [right] clouts Oleksandr Usyk in Egypt on May 23, 2026](https://photo.boxingscene.com/uploads/Oleksandr-Usyk-Rico-Verhoeven-20.webp)
