Mayweather Jr. Defends Choice of De La Hoya Over Cotto

[Horus]

According to boxrec he beat two other fighters who'd never lost. They were in his first and fourth fights. The thing is, it was their FIRST fight.

I wouldn't. count the Corrales fight at all. If he'd fought Corrales a year before Coralles might have killed him. He waited until Corrales had gone up to lightweight, and was having trouble even making THAT weight, before he offered Corrales a large purse to fight at 130. Corrales spoke about it on TV BEFORE the fight.

When asked about his difficulty in making weight, he said " well it isn't easy, but they made me an offer I couldn't refuse".

The poor guy needed money to pay his lawyers, and he was already going to jail after the fight. So he was in a physical and psychological mess.

Read this.........

This is an brief account of the weigh-in for this fight by T K Stewart, who is a very well known boxing writer as well as a Barney Award winner. I can say that Corrales had given up the 130 class 6 months before and was campaigning as a lightweight, when Mayweather saw his opporunity to take advantage of him and, as Corrales said, when saying that is was VERY hard to make the weight, "they made me an offer I couldn't refuse".....



Floyd Mayweather, Jr. vs. Diego Corrales, MGM Grand, Las Vegas, Nevada, January 19, 2001 - The fighters are weighing in and Corrales misses making the 130-pound mark his first time. He comes back about an hour later and strips down to nothing. I'm standing beside HBO fight judge Harold Lederman, and he says, "I haven't weighed 130 since my Bar Mitzvah!" Corrales looks like a prisoner of war he is so skinny. 6'0" tall and 130 pounds. His skin is gray and dry and he looks like he's close to death with hollow cheeks and sunken eyes. He looks like one of those starving African kids you see on those UNICEF commercials as his head looks too big for his emaciated body. Only a few of us are there. Jose Sulaiman, Marc Ratner and a handful of others. If Corrales doesn't make the weight there is no fight...He steps on the scales and everybody takes a deep breath....130 it is! Miguel Diaz his trainer erupts in celebration. The fight will go on!

Hi Edgar,

It was an interesting fight for sure.

A few weeks before the fight, Corrales had a couple of his wisdom teeth
removed and this kept him from training for several days during a critical
point in his preparation. Diego was also dealing with the spousal abuse
charges that eventually sent him to jail for over a year not long after
this fight took place. His mind was elsewhere, and his trainer Miguel Diaz
told me it was all he could do to get Corrales to come out of his bedroom
from playing video games to train. They trained for this fight at the
Prince Ranch just outside the Las Vegas city limits.

Whatever the case, Corrales was actually a 5-4 favorite at the Vegas
sportsbooks when the first bell for this fight rang, so a majority of the
people actually thought he would win it. I believe he would have won as
well had his weight not been the real issue for him. I picked him to win,
but after I saw the weigh-in I knew he had no chance. The man was
emaciated and he was totally spent. He looked physically ill and he no
doubt was. His eyes were sunken in his head and his skin tone and color
was corps-like.

As for his performance in the fight? It was unusual. He had no pop on his
punches, there was no speed and he was always a step of two behind Floyd.
The shots that caused him to sink to the canvas weren't anything like he
withstood against Jose Luis Castillo Acelino Freitas or Joel Casamayor in
later fights. Your theory is the best explanation for his performance in
that fight.

That was a big fight and it was tainted by the weight problem. I would
have loved to see the two of them do it again at 135 or 140 but it doesn't
look like a rematch will ever happen now. Corrales is also damaged goods.
The first fight with Castillo probably ruined him and the struggles of
trying to make 130 and 135 over the years has also played havoc with him.
My guess is that Corrales is pretty much at his end.

Tom Stewart

So you edgarg

If Floyd and Cotto were to fight after the Oscar fight.. and Cotto Won.

Would you Not Count Cotto's victory over Floyd. Since Floyd would had not fought at Welther Wegith 6 months before the fight...at 147...???

Since 5 -10 pounds make so much of difference ...!!
And you dont want to count the Corralles fight for Floyd

[Fox McCloud]

You have a highly exaggerated opinion of your favourite fighter. No one would go to you for objectivity. One must weigh ALL the pros and cons. And one needs to have seen great fighters.

And of course, one needs to know something about boxing............

I don't deal in cow manure my dear sir-except for my tomato plants.

You consider what he said over-exaggerated?

He just said that no one at 147 was going to dominate Floyd, and that it would take a great fighter to decision him.

If you don't think those are true, then there is something wrong with you.

[RodBarker]

You have a highly exaggerated opinion of your favourite fighter. No one would go to you for objectivity. One must weigh ALL the pros and cons. And one needs to have seen great fighters.

And of course, one needs to know something about boxing............

I don't deal in cow manure my dear sir-except for my tomato plants.

Well you better start name dropping because all your doing is spraying cow manure all over the place , name 12 or more welter Robinson opponents that would make mince meat out of Floyd , and then will see where your objectivity resides .

[El Jesus]

None of this matters anymore. You know why?

Because if Cotto wins in July, the fans and media will take care of it for him. Floyd will go insane with all the questions about fighting Cotto. You think it's bad now? Just wait.

They know it though. they arent ******, thats what they are waiting on, and once it happens, itll be time and we will all go nuts on the internet like pawl wall baybay.

[Fox McCloud]

yes I know he did. I think he first fought at welter, then light then at 130. He weighed over 180 when he came out of jail. And it was all fat, having lost his muscle. He said that all the exercise he got there was running up the stairs, and he could only do so much of that.

I recall at the time I was in touch with Butch Gottlieb about it, since he was a very close friend of Corrales, and saw him regularly several times a week.

So wait a minute... how did it suddenly become easier to make 130 after he was in jail, considering he blew up to 180, than it was for the Mayweather bout?

Seriously... help me make sense of it, because this isn't making a lick of sense to me.

[warp1432]

Do you want to go into how Baldomir defeated Clottey? I mean, seriously? Are you pointing to the Clottey win to justify how good Baldomir was? Getting a DQ victory when so far down on points, you need a knockout isn't exactly a crowning achievement of a win.

Mosley beat Oscar at 147 by the way, in case you might have forgotten.

Badlomir still had 4 rounds won in that fight and if Clottey kept headbutting then hey by all means it is a win.

Also about the Corrales-Mayweather thing, Corrales was only of 4 months not 6. By the time he started training he had probably really only taken 2 months off.

The shots that Corrales took from Mayweather at 130 were a lot faster then anything that had hit Corrales. The speed caught him off guard. Mayweather also had some serious pop at 130.

Hell, Casamayor knocked down Corrales with his speed too.

[BabyFaceAssasin]

I really can't stand Floyd. He thinks people actually like him No one likes him. They only buy his PPV's to see if he'll lose.

[edgarg]

So you edgarg

If Floyd and Cotto were to fight after the Oscar fight.. and Cotto Won.

Would you Not Count Cotto's victory over Floyd. Since Floyd would had not fought at Welther Wegith 6 months before the fight...at 147...???

Since 5 -10 pounds make so much of difference ...!!
And you dont want to count the Corralles fight for Floyd

I really don't understand what you're talking about so please forgive me. I didn't SAY that 5-10 lbs made the difference, since I previously showed how Sugar ray Robinson regularly beat Hall of Famers weighing up to 15 lbs more than he at the scales (don't know how much more in the ring).

I wrote about the effort of the drastic effect of a 6 foot guy MAKING A WEIGHT he just couldn't do and be able to lift his arms.

I'm sure you're not interested but my "theory" as T.K. refers to it, but it was that Corrales was suffering from hypo-naetremia during his Mayweather fight. This caused him to be as if he were wading through molasses. If you saw the fight you'd know what i mean. the way he sank slowly to the canvas in sections, when he was hit, not very hard. he went down 5 times. That fight should NEVER have taken place, it was a scandalous crime and nearly ruined an hapless and over-brave victim of "gamesmanship".

Hypo-naetremia is caused by a drastic fluid loss, and a quick over-rehydration, which upsets the metabolic mineral balance of the blood. etc. At least as far as I can remember. LOOK IT UP. A few athletes die from it every year, often long distance racing cyclists.

Another point about that fight. Larry Merchant several times has talked about how, when he was passing Coralles' dressing room just before the fight, he saw him "wolfing down a huge sandwich" He also said..."the poor guy".

[Bad_Barracuda]

Mayweather's not a true fighter anymore. I don't even wanna talk about it. It's completely ******.

Cotto would fight Oscar 100x's if he could

So would Margarito

So you can stop hating..

The Oscar that Floyd beat at 154 IS A BETTER FIGHTER THAN COTTO AND TONY.

Cotto or Tony could NOT have beat Oscar that night..no way in hell..

Oscar at Jr Middle is a helleva lot better than Daniel Santos..

Cotto's lil stumpy ass can't win a Jack in the Box prize at 154..lol..not with that ****ty defense..

When Floyd fights Cotto..he will slice him to riibbons..

[Thread Stealer]

I'd like you to tell me where and when Dempsey said he wouldn't "fight a coloured challenger". Dempsey had NO colour prejudice. The vast majority of fight-goers were white. They paid for the seats. There was NO money in fighting a black man. And the average fighter, before he'd become a famous champ, would basically fight for "peanuts" just enought to keep him and his manager going.

That's why the old time fighters had so many fights, 2-3-4 a month even. They were making wages.

The Dempsey-Wills fight was arranged at Dempsey's request, but pre-fight sales were so poor that Doc Kearns cancelled it. He NEVER wanted Dempsey to fight a black man for that, very obvious reason. Wills had No chance of beating Dempsey.

People talk about Langford. I remember when they found the poor guy, not too long before he died, and collected some money for him. I still have the picture, taken at that time, of Sam sitting on the front steps of an old shack, blind and penniless.

No need to make a big thing out of Jack Johnson or Dempsey not wanting to fight Langford. Johnson's reasons were 1) he lived a very high life and needed money, being always broke. 2) There was NO MONEY in fighting Langford. 3) He'd already fought Langford before he became World Champ, actually being the World COLOURED Champ. He half killed him, knocking him down a couple of times whilst giving him a bad beating, ober 15 rounds, playing with him, as he always did with his opponents. Several times with Langford on his way down, Johnson would clinch and hold him up. Johnson was far superior to ANY other fighter of his time.

As for Dempsey not wanting to fight Langford, by the time THAT fight was suggested by Langford-who wanted to make some money- Langford was in his late 30's, half-blind and years past his best. Dempsey, to make Sam feel good, would say that Sam was too good for him.

It was The Ring that quoted Dempsey as saying he'd "pay no attention to colored fighters".



The Sam Langford story is extremely sad and tragic. The story about Jimmy Bivins is also similarly depressing and upsetting.