By Ryan Maquiñana
Pound-for-pound king Floyd Mayweather and his challenger to the throne, Robert Guerrero, exchanged a combination of barbs and bravado last Saturday when they met for the first time in Las Vegas to promote their May 4 pay-per-view clash.
In a video obtained by CSNBayArea.com via Showtime Pay-Per-View, the two combatants went chest-to-chest and refused to back down from each other as members from both teams looked on behind the cameras.
Here are some of the soundbytes gleaned from the video:
Mayweather: This ain’t [Andre] Berto. This is the real deal. The raw dog. You can’t hit what you can’t see.
Guerrero: That’s what Berto said…This is what I asked for. This is what I’m getting. That’s what I want, the real deal.
Mayweather: Tell me how you want it.
Guerrero: Let’s do it toe-to-toe. You guys heard that? Toe-to-toe.
Mayweather: I don’t know who you beat, and I don’t know who you lost to.
Guerrero: Man bro, you’re just wasting time talking.
Mayweather: I don’t know who you beat, and I don’t know who you lost to.
Guerrero: Well, you’re going to find out who I’m going to beat.
Mayweather: Easy work. Easy work. I ain’t gotta worry about it.
Guerrero: You don’t intimidate me, bro.
Mayweather: May 4th, it’s me and you…They said you said it’s going to be easy for you?
Guerrero: It’s going to be easy for me.
Mayweather: Right. It’s going to be easy for you to get your ass stomped. Stomped.
While a more reserved-than-usual version of Mayweather emerged in an interview with CSNBayArea.com a fortnight ago
, the five-division titleholder’s competitive spirit has begun to take shape before the press tour has even been announced.
Guerrero also reflected on their initial confrontation.
“Today was a normal day for me,” Mayweather said. “I’ve been shooting commercials with my opponents. I think Marquez, Mosley, Ortiz, Cotto, and now Robert Guerrero. I don’t know if it’s Guer-re-ro, or Guer-re-ra, but I don’t know.”
“Floyd’s trying to be Floyd,” Guerrero said. “You know how he intimidates everybody, gets under their skin. ‘I never lost, this and that, bla bla bla.’ Well you better be prepared to, because all that stuff right there doesn’t get to me. Nothing at all he said got me heated or anything, because if I get heated, I’m swinging, so believe that. That’s the type of guy that I am. Once I’m heated, I’m swinging.”
Ryan Maquiñana was the boxing producer for NBCOlympics.com during London 2012 and writes a weekly column for CSNBayArea.com. He is a full member of the Boxing Writers Association of America and the Ratings Panel for Ring Magazine. E-mail him at
, check out his blog at Norcalboxing.net, or follow him on Twitter: @RMaq28.
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