By Sean Crose
Well, whaddaya know? It was a good fight after all. A real good fight. In fact, there’s little doubt that The Moment will go down as a controversial bout. Floyd Mayweather won a majority decision over an exceedingly game Marcos Maidana at the MGM Grand in Vegas on Saturday, but the fans within the arena were clearly not happy.
Truth be told, it could have gone either way. It was one of those calls that people simply aren’t going to be happy with no matter who wins or loses. Floyd was clearly the more skilled of the two men. He was also the better puncher. Yet Maidana had the momentum on his side. He also beat on Floyd for all twelve rounds. I personally had it a draw. What’s more, I wouldn’t have been surprised if the decision had gone to the unruly slugger from Argentina.
One thing was for certain – Money Mayweather found himself in a real fight, perhaps the first real fight of his career. Simply put, Maidana wasn’t impressed with the Mayweather legend – not at all. He went at the man as if he were a loudmouth in a bar instead of the widely praised pound for pound king of all boxing. And the first quarter of the fight clearly went to the challenger.
In fact, it wasn’t until the middle rounds that Mayweather began to assert himself. From then on the fight was back and fourth. It became more a matter of what kind of fighting one prefers than it did a contest where a clear victor would emerge. In short, those who admire skill, speed and accuracy will be happy Mayweather carried the day. Those who think the power to put someone on the ropes is worthy of judges’ points, however, will clearly feel the true winner was robbed.
It was just one of those nights.
Let’s look at the larger picture, though. Most of us didn’t think The Moment, as it was called, would be a moment worth remembering. Turns out we were wrong. For after the dust settles, Mayweather is going to look like a very, very, mortal being indeed. The aura of invincibility will be gone, replaced by questions about age, battle tactics and overblown reputations.
After the decision had been read, Floyd himself made it seem like he had planned for the fight to be a slugfest. Perhaps he truly had. The man had said as much leading up to the fight. As our own Ivan Goldman pointed out, however, Floyd always talks like that before a bout. In all honesty, I think Floyd had no choice but to roll up his sleeves and get dirty against Maidana. No matter what his strategy was, Floyd was going to get backed up against the ropes at some point and that was all there was to it.
Of course afterward the possibility of a rematch was brought up and Floyd seemed to go along with the idea (though you never know with Floyd). If he and Maidana do meet again in September, we’ll see if his goal really was to give the fans some excitement on Saturday or not. For if he can avoid another street fight, you can be sure Floyd will. Heck, why wouldn’t he?
One more thing: my mind was changed on Saturday night. Up until that point, I had pretty much felt that Floyd was avoiding Manny Pacquiao for no good reason, that if the two ever did meet in the ring, Money would have a better chance of winning.
I don’t feel that way any more. Just imagine if it was Manny and not Marcos who was throwing punches from all those odd angels during The Moment. Think Floyd would still say PacMan was washed up?
