Like most Floyd Mayweather fights, this one was over before it began. Robert Guerrero talked well before the bout, but couldn’t even get close to the best boxer in the world, who won by a unanimous decision through all scorecards, retaining his WBC Welterweight belt, adding The Ring honor and most importantly, staying undefeated while keeping his place as the number one pound-4-pound fighter in the world.
Many have talked a lot of trash before fighting Mayweather. Most of the promotional stuff is talking nonsense, although Miguel Cotto hardly acted cocky before his tussle against Mayweather, and ended up putting a relatively close fight against a man who was weeks away from serving some time in prison. A year later, and no rust or anything else stopped Mayweather from asserting his dominance in the ring from the first moment he stepped in it.
I knew after the Cotto fight, I was getting hit too much and my dad would help me get hit less. My defense was on point, and he told me just stick to your defense — the less you get hit, the better — and to box smart.
Guerrero landed 113 punches all fight, connecting with only 19% of his shots. He barely managed to land a single power shot, none of them doing anything to disrupt the rhythm Mayweather was in for the full 12 rounds. Mayweather himself connected with 41% of his 476 punches, including 153 of 254 when it came to power shots, an extremely efficient 60%.
Guerrero kept trying to use his height and size to corner Mayweather, but without the hand speed and elusiveness to provide a good enough match for Mayweather, the tactic never really worked for him. Mayweather fought with only one hand, barely throwing any with his left, but hand no problem handling the Southpaw danger everyone keeps talking about. His defense was perfect, maybe the best that it has been in recent fights.
Mayweather had a big fourth round with a shot that rocked but didn’t drop Guerrero, who has hit the canvas only once during his career. Mayweather landed 23 power shots in the eight round, missing only 10, as he opened a cut above the eye of a desperate Guerrero, who couldn’t get anything going for him, even with the 12 round coming up and him needing a big shot badly. Instead, the last clean shot landed by anyone was from Mayweather.
What’s next? Across the Atlantic, voices tell of Amir Khan moving up to Welterweight in order to get a Mayweather fight, but it doesn’t sound likely that it’ll be this September. Saul Alvarez sounds like the most lucrative of fights, and Mayweather is about money more than anything else, having five more fights on his contract with Showtime. As always, more than a few guys will offer themselves up to become the first to beat Mayweather, and Floyd will simply handpick them in orderto make sure he earns the most amount of money with the least amount of risk standing in his way.