Comments Thread For: Laila Ali on Mayweather: TBE Takes More Than an '0'

[elishua F]

floyd is the only boxer ever to be years past his prime and still be p4p king. . when Ali hit his mid 30s, he was trash .. his rope a dope tactic was trash, he was the wladimir of the 70s with his clinching..he said the only reason frazier beat him was because of the white judges, he said this after the norton III fight "Kenny’s style is too difficult for me. I can’t beat him, and I sure don’t want to fight him again. I honestly thought he beat me in Yankee Stadium, but the judges gave it to me, and I’m grateful to them."

norton isn't even top 50 heavyweight, this is like floyd struggling with carlos baldomir for three wars.

[Biolink]

Says the woman that ducked the life out of Anne Wolfe then claimed she was the GOAT woman's boxer

[Ahmed_Ismail]

The problem with Mayweather is he never fought the great fighters of his era during their primes. Not one. He usually waited until they were all past their primes and in one instance when 1 fighter was too green.

All the greats fought other greats of there time in their career primes. This was important to them. Yes, money was important to them too, but they were not obsessed with this A-side B-side bull****. This obsession with A-side has been created by Mayweather and his minions have picked up on it and have made it the be all and end all of what is suppose to be important. Even the press has gotten caught up in it. And now other fighters are doing it even when they, themselves are not A material yet or may never be A material.

De La Hoya fought Trinidad when they were both in their prime. He fought Quartey, Mosley, Vargas, Hopkins all when they were in the prime of their careers.

Sugar Ray fought Hearns when they were both in their primes, also Benitez and Duran. Hoyfield fought Bowe while both were in their prime. Jones & Toney fought each other while they were in their prime. Ali fought Frasier, Chavez fought Taylor, Lewis fought Vitali, Barerra & Morales fought each other in their prime. I can go on and on when great fighters fought the best of their eras while each combatant was in the prime of their careers.

On the other side you have Mayweather. Who talks about how smart he is when it comes to picking who he fights and how smart he is when setting up all the rules that his opponent must obey in order to have the honor of fighting him. I must say its not being smart, but being clever. So Mayweather only chooses his opponent after careful consideration.

His decision is based on lowering the risk of possibly losing. And fighting fighters past their prime lowers the risk of him losing far more than any other factor. Let us look at the evidence. Now I am just looking at the best of his era. I do give him credit for his time at 130lbs, but when he moved up to 135 things changed. He fought arguably the best lightweight champ on the 1st decade of the 21st century, Castillo, and everyone knows he lost that fight. So 135lbs is the last time he fought a great champion while both were in their prime.

He fought no one of worth at 140lbs. Next stop was 147 and above. He fought De La Hoya at the end of his career when Oscar was a part-time fighter. He fought Mosley and Cotto when both were past their prime. Mayweather could of fought much better competition, but the risk factor was much lower against Baldomir, Gatti, Judah, Guererro & Ortiz so he took those fights instead.

Pacquiao is the best example of my theory. A fight that should of taken place 5-7 yrs ago only happened 2 weeks ago. Now something like this is unique. An instance like this has never really happened in the modern age of boxing. The few times something similar like this happened , when 2 great fighters never fought, happened in the early 1900s and it had to do with with race. There was absolutely 0 excuses for Mayweather to have not fought Paq 5-7yrs ago. The excuses of money, promoters, drug testing, etc. were used only to stop the fight from happening. Imagine if Leonard made these excuses and refused to fight Hearns. If Jones did the same thing with Toney, Holyfield made the same excuses regarding Bowe. No one would of stood for it and these excuses would of been addressed and the fight would of been made. But Mayweather finally accepts the fight after everyone finally had enough. And by this time the risk of him losing was reduced significantly. By 2015 Manny had a few loses, and he was 36 1/2 yrs of age ( a fighter of his type, wear & tear made him much older). Mayweather's age of 39 is much less of a factor due to his style and his 2 yr lay-off.

Do we all agree that Hagler, Hearns, Leonard, De La Hoya, Duran, Chavez would of fought Paq while they were all equally in their prime? We all know the answer to that. We know the answer because we know the characters of the above named fighters. They all wanted to fight the best while they were all at there best. They did this during there careers because it matters. Its about fair play, its about honor and they get all the glory this way. This way there can be no excuses at all and defeating the greats of there time while they were still in there prime made the victory so much more meaningful, historically important, and sweeter. Mayweather cannot say the same about his career and even though he has a win against Pacquiao we all know how meaningless it is not because of Paqs injury, but because he fought an old fighter and there is no glory or bragging rights when beating an old fighter. (just asked Calzaghe).

Uneducated comment, you probably started watching Floyd Mayweather after his fight with Dela Hoya, go watch his post fight interviews before that, listen to how many great fighter this guy called out and they straight up neglected him and didn't even mention him, Shane Mosley was being called out since 1999, but the fight didn***8217;t happen in 1999, when Jack Mosley said the fight should be worth eight figures to his son at a time neither man was making seven figures. It didn***8217;t happen in the first half of the last decade after Mosley surpassed Mayweather***8217;s marketability with two wins over De La Hoya, nor in the second half of that decade when Mosley stood in this same ring after beating Vargas in 2006 and said he needed a vacation. Shane wanted no part of Floyd cuz FLoyd was a high risk low reward type of fight.

Kostya Tszyu was called out on numerous occasions and I'm yet to see any of his interviews where he even mentions a possible fight against Floyd, same with Joel Casamayor and Freitas, Hell he even called out Prince Naseem and he was willing to go down to 128 to fight him and Prince Naseem didn't even mention him. Floyd called out Dela Hoya for like 5 years and he moved up all these weight classes to get that fight and he agreed to all the terms to fight him, yeah Oscar wasn't in his prime but Floyd was coming up in weight and couldn't even make 150, he was outweighed by 15 lbs on fight night, made only 20 out of 150 million and was forced to wear 10 oz. gloves with extra padding.

Margarito was porbably cheating around 2006-2007 where a potential fight was suggested but Margarito was with Arum and Arum had a lot of problems with Floyd at the time, the fight was expected to generate 50+ mio and Arum offered Floyd a lame 8 million, so Floyd bought out his contract and became his own man but couldn't fight Margarito cuz Margarito stayed with Arum, had Margarito done the same the fight would've been made and he would've walked away with 20 million, but instead he stayed with Arum. Cotto was also protected by Arum and Arum himslef admitted that he didn't want Cotto to fight Floyd cuz he was too green.

Pacquiao, don't get me started on that, but I'm gonna tell you this, this is the first time I see someone get glorified for TURNING DOWN drug testing in any sport, also if Manny was this warrior who didn't care about the money, why didn't he accept the deal Floyd made him in 2009, why did he insist on getting 50-50 even though he wasn't making the PPV numbers Floyd was making, why did he extend his contract with Arum in 2012 knowing that he was the reason the fight didn't happen, had he not extended his contract and had he gone on his own we would've seen this fight in 2012 instead of Miguel Cotto, then Pacquiao got KTFO and he had to get back to winning ways first before he fought Floyd, once he had an impressive performance against Algieri the fight got made and he got outclassed by a 38 year old way past his prime, not interested in boxing anymore Floyd Mayweather.

[MrTambourineMan]

floyd is the only boxer ever to be years past his prime and still be p4p king. . when Ali hit his mid 30s, he was trash .. his rope a dope tactic was trash, he was the wladimir of the 70s with his clinching..he said the only reason frazier beat him was because of the white judges, he said this after the norton III fight "Kenny’s style is too difficult for me. I can’t beat him, and I sure don’t want to fight him again. I honestly thought he beat me in Yankee Stadium, but the judges gave it to me, and I’m grateful to them."

norton isn't even top 50 heavyweight, this is like floyd struggling with carlos baldomir for three wars.

And dumb dipshit post of the day goes to...

[ShoulderRoll]

Someone needs to tell Laila that her dad wasn't really The Greatest.

That title belongs to Ray Robinson.

[SkillspayBills]

Man Laila is on a damn crusade with her hatred. It's pretty hilarious lol. YOU MAD......OR NAH

[Ahmed_Ismail]

And dumb dipshit post of the day goes to...

Most of the comment was right except for the part about Ali being trash in his mid 30s, he wasn't trash since he beat a lot of good fighters but he was way worse than he was when he was younger, the declination was very apparent and yes he clinched way too much at this stage of his career.
The comment about Ken Norton was kinda ignorant tbh, Norton was a great fighter, but the rest is right even the part about Ali admitting that he lost to Norton, it was in an interview with Mark Cronin in October 1976, I had Norton also winning the third fight 8-6.

[Fetta]

After seeimg Floyd dismantle Pac i think he can hang with anyone.

Will he beat them? IDK cause Its fantasy fights but floyd can hang.

[rambov]

Floyds the best. He's a true boxer built to go 15 rds.
If fights were still 15 rds he'd have much more kos

[Scipio2009]

What's silly with Floyd Mayweather Jr calling himself "TBE" when Muhammad Ali had the gall to start calling himself "The Greatest" with Joe Louis still living?

revisionism of history is heavy on this site.