By TORI ADDISON
Staff Writer
I have three words to describe the junior middleweight world title fight that went down Saturday, September 14th; Floyd “Money” Mayweather. This guy is simply unstoppable. Mayweather is 36 years old and held a record of 44-0-0 prior to the fight. His opponent, Saúl Álvarez, known as Canelo in the boxing world, is thirteen years younger than Mayweather. Canelo went into the fight with a record of 43-0-1. In short, Canelo had one less win than Mayweather and is almost half his age. I would say that’s pretty impressive.
Don’t get me wrong, I was rooting for Mayweather, but the way he handled himself before the match secretly had me thinking otherwise. Compared to Canelo, he looked far from composed. Mayweather was chewing his gum at about fifty smacks per minute while staring down Canelo; a sure sign of nervousness in my opinion. Canelo on the other hand looked like he was going to go straight into the ring and destroy Mayweather. My other problem was who Mayweather decided to have escorted him into the arena. I already knew that Lil’ Wayne was expected to walk alongside Mayweather during his entrance, but that wasn’t my issue. It was when I saw Justin Beiber to his right that I couldn’t help but burst out laughing. How is anyone supposed to take you seriously when you have a nineteen year old insurgent walk beside you into one of the biggest matches of your career? At this point I just wanted the fight to get started so Canelo could do his thing and Mayweather’s ego could finally take a hit.
Now I’m not going to lie, I was a little disappointed by this fight in general. It wasn’t that it was boring, it was just typical. After waiting for a table for two and a half hours in a packed Dave and Buster’s, I was expecting a monstrous knock-out to end the match. Not to my liking, it went for all twelve rounds. Mayweather was too quick for Canelo who missed more shots than he actually made. I have to give it to Canelo though, when he did land a punch on Mayweather it was powerful enough to have an impact. It’s not that Mayweather physically beat Canelo, it’s that he out danced him. At one point Canelo missed so badly that Mayweather mocked him mid-round. As the match progressed, Canelo’s facial expression turned from stone to frustration. Mayweather knew that he was going to win as soon as round one started and boy, was he right. The match results were left in the hand of three judges after the twelfth round ended. Two of the three judges declared Mayweather victorious while the last voted for a draw, (114-114, 116-112, 117-111), which, as you can imagine had Mayweather fuming.
Overall, I do not think Canelo was ready to face Mayweather. Canelo looked lost during the fight as he was unable to keep up with Mayweather’s footwork and pace. If anything, the match set forth Mayweather’s lasting ranks. He is the best boxer of his time and when said and done he will go down as one of the best in history. Hopefully we will be watching Mayweather take on Manny Pacquiáo in the near future, but until then Mayweather will continue to soak in the glory of his undefeated streak.
