Floyd 'Money' Mayweather is without doubt one of the most celebrated, and would in most Boxing fans opinions be one of the very best boxers to have emerged in the Twenty-First Century to date.
The difference between boxing fans would be in how to rate Floyd; whether as a welterweight or as a 21st century boxer. Or as an all time great.
Assessing Mayweather as a 21st century legend is challenging enough if one is thinking on a pound for pound basis. The competition would certainly include the likes of the Klitschko Brothers, Manny Pacquiao, Gennady Golovkin and spillovers from the 1990s; like Lennox Lewis and Bernard Hopkins.
Whether or not Mayweather is to be considered greater than these fighters depends on how his undefeated record is weighed.
Finished his career very well
Whichever way the reasoning goes, it is surely to Mayweather's credit that he has finished his career very well, and that is what makes his all time rating much easier to work out.
At some point in time around the end of the last decade, Floyd's record was being derided by those who felt he evaded some great competition, and it was almost believable, until one started asking which boxer he evaded. At the end of the day, Floyd Mayweather ducked no one. He beat all put before him. Capping it up with a very convincing victory over the man many thought could beat him: Manny Pacquiao!
Manny's motive into question
Despite Manny's later claims that he was robbed and actually won the fight with Floyd, even ringside commentators were unanimous that Floyd dominated most of the fight, almost completely preventing Manny from putting up his A - Game, the intense attacking style that had smothered the likes of Ricky Hatton and Miguel Cotto.
Pacquiao would later claim he entered the fight with an injury, which further puts his motive for fighting into question.
If Manny Pacquiao really felt confident of beating Mayweather, he had absolutely no business entering that ring with an injury! It was a disservice to boxing and to the record pay-per-view and ticket sales paying viewers who paid to watch the fight live.
Many of these viewers were top celebrities, some of whom were not even real boxing fans, but who came not just to watch a fight, but to witness what was supposed to be a spectacle, one of the greatest boxing contests ever seen. They were mostly to be disappointed, and Professional Boxing as a brand may suffer for it for a long time.
Manny Pacquiao only managed to exceed the very lowest expectations of him. He lasted the distance and never came close to being stopped by Floyd, but that being said, he never came close to providing the best opposition Floyd had ever faced in the ring. Manny was beaten on points by a wide margin. The fight could never fairly even have been judged a split decision.
In truth, Canelo Alvarez had given Floyd more difficulty than Manny.
It was a wide margin points win in Floyd's favour, and Manny's denial of the fact lost him not only the victor's respect but also possibly that of some of his previous fans.
Fans wanted a Manny Pacqulao win
Indeed, most of the mostly American crowd of fans that fight night wanted a Manny Pacquiao win. It did not come convincingly close to happening, and the pre-fight opinion of the core boxing public, those who practice the sport and/or study and follow it from a technical perspective, eventually took the day. As Juan Manuel Marquez, Pacquiao's eventual Arch Nemesis after three close fights and one brutal knockout had predicted to his face in an interview session, Manny lost the biggest pro fight of his life, clearly.
Marquez, who had also lost clearly to Mayweather much earlier, knew it would be hard for Manny to hit Floyd with his short hands, escape Floyd's very accurate, very fast jabs from a well managed distance, and generally dominate the bigger and older but amazingly better conditioned athlete that Floyd Mayweather was. The casual boxing public didn't!
Best defensive fighter ever
Floyd is almost definitely one of the top 5 boxers of all time, and arguably the best defensive fighter ever. His resort to a more defensive style of fighting was a consequence of a hand injury in a fight, from which point on he lost a significant portion of his knockout power, as his records will show. Had it not been for this event, he may have actually been able to win more of his later fights, including that versus Manny, by stoppage, and as a result have much fewer doubters.
As for Manny, any plan of a rematch with Mayweather is unlikely to work because Floyd's bitterness at his denial of the first loss. His two decisive wins over Timothy Bradley, to whom he once lost very controversially, should serve as a good platform upon which to retire.
