Warning: Mayweather fans may experience stress, anger, frustration and or severe denial after reading this unconventional viewpoint.
“He never expected this. He never expected a Margarito to come out of nowhere and challenge him. He’s off balance. He’s confused.”
“Mayweather was just concentrating on boxing and his record label. Margarito’s thing was, This is something I’ve never had before. So Mayweather kept pushing him away, pushing him away. The more he pushed him away, the more the desire built inside him,” said the very well-informed east coast boxing trainer. “And when he erupted like that, Floyd became the ant looking up at the mountain, with all the fire and lava coming out of it. In amazement. And Margarito took advantage of that. Because he got to a point where he built up and he built up and when he exploded, it wasn’t anything Floyd could do about it. So now Floyd has to go back and try to get back what he had before. It’s gonna be hard because Margarito got him off balance now. Floyd never saw this coming. He never expected this. And it happens all the time.”
“When somebody’s on top, they get so involved in everything else, they’re not really concerned with what’s going on right in front of him. The person that they’re trying to avoid is right in front of him. So that person (Margarito) is gonna demand that you give them the attention that he want and then he gonna take what he want. So, you know, I like Floyd, Floyd is a good friend. Nice guy. But when you got a lot of things going on, the record label, trying to regulate that and be the president, and he’s still trying to be general in the boxing ring, it’s gonna be tough.”
“Desire, it’s a very important thing. The desire is something Margarito has. And he built it up to the point where he’s actually bringing Floyd into his domain – where he has infinite desire. So all it takes – Mayweather’s mind is all over – it’s over to the left, over to the right, it’s over this way, it’s over that way – he just thinkin he can bring it back real quick. You can’t bring your mind back to something if it’s been strayed off for months and a couple of years on the record label (and safe, easy, non-threatening fights). He’s trying to master that record label. You got giants in that game that are looking at you like you’re an ant. They’re purposefully throwin you off your game. So how you gonna have three minds trying to fight somebody with one mind? It’s not gonna happen. Mayweather’s gotta reassess his gameplan.”
“At this point Mayweather’s shown his mind ain’t there. And so I don’t think he’s gonna perform well either. Like I said, once somebody (Margarito) gets you off balance they start compiling on that. And they compile on it. Before you know it, you think you could overcome it, but you can’t. You can’t (in that case you duck all questions regarding the entity that has got you off balance, you ban him from entering your press conferences, you stutter when somebody forces you to talk about Margarito on video, you make up excuse after excuse to duck him, etc.). Margarito’s got him off balance already. And he’s taking advantage of it. With that type of desire and determination he could take him out. Mayweather ain’t really suffered nothing yet (hence, the recent stale wins?). But everybody’s got to taste defeat – to build themselves back up again.”
“Margarito’s desire – as far as I’m concerned – it’s very strong. You can almost feel him, without him even talking. You can just see the look in his eye, the thousand yard stare (is that what Floyd saw when Margarito confronted him to his face in Las Vegas -youtube video?). You’re lookin at somebody like, Let me just get over there next to him, I need to get in the ring. I need to prove to everybody that I can beat this guy. And it ain’t gonna be so much about his skill. Cuz everybody know that Mayweather is skillfully dominant. But then again, desire will shatter out skill any time. If it’s stronger. You could have the skill but if you’re not practicing your desire with that skill, you’re gonna flip. You’re gonna flip. Just like race car drivers do it all the time. Runnin walls, they know they’re supposed to turn here when they make those turns, but they’re so focused on other things going on in their mind, they turn the steering wheel and they turn into a wall. And Mayweather’s running into a wall. He don’t see it though. And you can’t tell him that to his face. He won’t believe it. He will not believe (Denial in the form of, Who is Margarito?) He think he got everything on point (‘I’m the best ever’ – the cover up of the fear?), he’s balanced and everything is fine.”
“Some guys, the desire is so strong, that stare isn’t a thousand yard stare it becomes a million yard stare. The physical body is a slave to the desire. So, you know, lots of luck to him. But Mayweather’s got to be very, very careful, he’s gotta get away, for at least six months.”
The Snake & The Rat…
“Snake and a rat. That’s a parable they actually showed on TV. What they did was they took a rat, put him in a glass container with a snake. And they had fed the snake, he was eating very well. So they put the rat in there and they was playing like brothers and getting along (like Floyd and Baldomir hugging/smiling each other at the press conference).
Then they starved the snake. For like four weeks. No food. They put the snake in the glass container but they separated it from the rat. So the snake’s in there, going around, looking for something to eat. Cuz he hadn’t ate for a month. Then they put the rat back in there. Through the glass you could see that the snake started to look at the rat. And then the rat started to look at the snake. And all of the sudden the rat is like saying, Whhhat’s going on? Why ain’t you friendly anymore? See, it’s gone out the window, it’s no more friendship. I’m hungry and I need to eat you. So the rat literally froze, froze when he looked into the eye of the snake. He saw the desire, the desperate hunger. He felt the infinite desire of the snake (like Floyd felt Margarito’s infinite desire?). And then the rat just fell to his side. And then he started crawling slowly towards the glass. He started hitting his head up to it – he tried to go through the glass to try to actually allow himself to be eaten. He became the desire of the snake. He wanted to be eaten. He wanted the snake’s desire. He saw the same thing that the snake wanted. He wanted to be pulled through the glass. And the rat literally ended up dying due to fear. Because his heart stopped beating. Because fear paralyzes you.”
Is that an analogy explaining why Floyd suddenly wants to retire? Is that why he’s suddenly given up wanting to be the Face of boxing, the alpha male of the ring? Did you ever hear about the alpha male of the wolf pack? When the alpha male of the wolf pack recognizes and accepts who is successor will be, what does he do? Does he fight off and kill the threat in a vicious battle for supremacy? No. The alpha wolf surrenders his status to the new dominant wolf and leaves the pack all alone, wandering off by himself. He retires from the pack.
“It’s proving a point that desire is actually stronger than our physical body. So when we want something, we generally gonna get it. Depending on how strong our desire is to get it,” said New York City-based trainer Johnny Gonzalez.
“The lie of the emperor is always believed before the truth of the peasant.” -unknown
“Nothing is ever what it seems.” -unknown
“All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed, second, it’s violently opposed, and third, it’s accepted as self-evident.” -Arthur Schopenhauer
This article was originally published in Nov. 2006. Check out Scoop’s site: www.thebiofile.com.
Author of “Heavyweight Armageddon: The Tyson-Lewis Championship Battle” was called “A smashing success, one of the two best boxing books I ever read,” by Emanuel Steward.