Floyd Mayweather Jr. (February 24, 1977) is an American boxing champion who is regarded as one of the best pound-for-pound fighters of his generation. A sport that runs in his blood, Mayweather has given everything to it, his blood, his sweat, his hard work and his life. His career graph is an illustrious one, studded with cent percent victories in his 50 outings, of which 27 came by knockout. He has major world titles in his belt including WBC super featherweight champion, WBC Lightweight Champion, WBC Super Lightweight champion, IBF Welterweight champion, WBC Welterweight champion, WBC Light Middleweight champion, WBA(Super) light middleweight champion, WBA (Super) welterweight champion and WBO Welterweight champion. Nearly every time in the ring, Mayweather has managed to give a flawless performance that has been the result of his blazing speed, punishing power and unbelievable ring generalship.
Biography[]
Sought to boxing as an outlet to vent his frustration and anger. He soon developed the skills required to become a pro boxer. His precision, speed and uncanny ring sense made him the best at his age. He attended Ottawa Hills High School before dropping out to pursue boxing for a living.
Amateur career[]
Floyd Mayweather Jr’s amateur career in boxing was a roll. He won the the national Golden Gloves championships in 1993, 1994 and 1996. Mayweather’s amateur career record stood at 84-8. In 1996, Mayweather participated in the Atlanta Olympics and won a bronze medal in the featherweight division. Same year, he fought his first professional bout against Roberto Apodaca which he comfortably won.
Professional career[]
His winning streak continued until early 1998 as he won most of his fights either by knockout. Mayweather’s brilliance in the ring made him highly popular within the sporting world. After his 14th professional fight, Mayweather’s father took over as his trainer, after being released from prison. Under his father’s training, Mayweather’s sporting skills enhanced considerably. He was touted by sporting legends as a pugilistic prodigy who would be an unbeatable and an indomitable force in boxing.
It took Mayweather just two years of professional boxing to win his first world title, the WBC Super Featherweight (130 lb) Championship against the then World No 1 Super Featherweight Genaro Hernandez, in 1998. His victory made him the lineal champion of the division. Also, he became the first 1996 U.S. Olympian to win a world title. In 1999, he successfully defended his title thrice; against Carlos Rico, Justin Juuko and Carlos Gerena.
In early 2000, Mayweather successfully defended his title for the fifth time, when he defeated Gregorio Vargas. At the same time, he fired his father as his manager and instead appointed James Prince. Later on, Roger Mayweather returned to his role as a trainer for Mayweather’s fight against Emanuel Burton.
He fought his most memorable fight against hard-hitting, former IBF super-featherweight champion Diego Corrales. Both the fighters were undefeated champions until then. Though technically Corrales was superior to Mayweather in all aspects, the latter’s finesse in the ring and superb speed helped him successfully defeat Corrales in every round knocking him off five times in a row, thus claiming boxing's mythical pound-for-pound title. Mayweather suffered the first knockdown of his career in a fight against Carlos Hernandez on May 26, 2001 in round six. Mayweather eventually won the fight in the 12th round. Mayweather’s last fight in the super featherweight division was against Jesus Chavez. While Chavez came into the fight with a 31-bout winning streak, Mayweather was defending his WBC super featherweight title for the eighth time. He successfully defeated Chavez thus ending the latter’s winning streak and defending his own title.
Mayweather’s first lightweight fight was against WBC champion Jose Luis Castillo. Despite being his debut, Mayweather shocked and surprised the WBC champion knocking him off in a 12-round game. It was due to the closeness of their first bout that Mayweather accepted a rematch which he yet again won by a marginal gap.
In April 2003, Mayweather successfully defended his WBC lightweight title in a unanimous decision over Dominican Victoriano Sosa in a 12-round bout. He then fought against WBC #1-ranked contender Phillip N'dou. Defeating the latter, he retained his ranking and was The Ring's lightweight champion and the #5-ranked best pound-for-pound boxer in the world. In 2004, Mayweather made his 140-pound debut in light welterweight by defeating former titlist DeMarcus ‘Chop Chop’ Corley.
In 2005, he fought against Henry Bruseles in another WBC elimination bout, outclassing Bruseles throughout the first seven rounds. His victory made him the mandatory challenger for Gatti's WBC light welterweight championship.
Mayweather bagged his third world title defeating Arturo Gatti in the ring on June 25, 2005 in Atlantic City. The fight was a highly publicized one with strong supporters hooting for Gatti. However, blowing the expectations of Gatti’s fans, Mayweather dominated the fight all over. Gatti was no match to Mayweather’s high speed and quick punches.
Following his victory against Gatti, Mayweather progressed to welterweight division. He won his first IBF welterweight title defeating Zab Judah on April 8, 2006. Later on, he fought Baldomir who had not lost a fight in eight years. Despite this, Mayweather defeated him convincingly for both WBC, The Ring and lineal welterweight titles.
Mayweather became the first fighter since Roberto Durán to have captured The Ring titles in both the lightweight and welterweight divisions. He also captured his third lineal championship in super featherweight, lightweight and welterweight. Mayweather next competed against light middleweight titleholder Oscar De la Hoya. Mayweather won the fight by a split decision in 12 rounds, capturing the WBC title. Following the fight, Mayweather retired from boxing.
He came back in the Ring not long after for a fight against light welterweight champion Ricky Hatton. The fight that took place on December 8, 2007 was the biggest welterweight showdown between two undefeated fighters. Controlling the fight right from the start, he knocked down Hatton to retain the welterweight championship title. Finally, Mayweather announced his retirement from boxing.
Mayweather came out of his retirement 21 months later to fight Juan Manuel Marquez. The match was a lopsided affair, with Mayweather winning it convincingly. Subsequently he fought against Shane Mosley, Manny Pacquiao and Victor Ortiz; each of the matches became the biggest non-heavyweight pay-per-view events in the sport’s history. Mayweather returned to light middleweight championship against Miguel Cotto winning the match comfortably. He then defended his title at welterweight in a match against Robert Guerrero.
His third return to light middleweight was in a fight against Saúl Álvarez which he won. His next opponent in the ring was Marcos Maidana. The match was an important one with Mayweather's WBC and The Ring welterweight titles as well as Maidana's WBA (Super) welterweight title at stake. Mayweather however, won it effortlessly wining back his and Maidana’s titles. A rematch of the fight also resulted in his favour. In 2015, Mayweather claimed that he would defend the WBC, WBA (Super), and The Ring welterweight titles against WBA interim champion Andre Berto. The match held on September 12 was a scintillating display of Mayweather brisk and quick moves. His sharp counters and aggressiveness took the match away from Berto. Following his victory, he announced his retirement. The WBC declared his welterweight and super welterweight titles vacant in November 2015.
Rumors of Mayweather’s return started doing the rounds in 2016. He faced MMA star Conor McGregor on August 26, 2017 at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada and was declared the winner. After the bout, Mayweather retired from professional fights.
Exhibitions fights[]
Despite being retired, Mayweather's winning streak only continued in various exhibition fights.
On November 5, 2018, the Japanese MMA promotion Rizin Fighting Federation announced that Mayweather would face undefeated kickboxer Tenshin Nasukawa at Rizin 14 on December 31, 2018, under unspecified rules. Of the bout, Mayweather stated in a press conference that "it wasn't easy to make this happen, but we told the people anything is possible, so now we're here and we wanna make sure that we give the people in Tokyo what they wanna see — blood, sweat and tears."
However, two days later, Mayweather denied that he would be fighting Nasukawa. He explained that he had been booked for a non-televised exhibition for "a small group of wealthy spectators" during the event, but that he was caught off-guard by the announcement that he would face Nasukawa—claiming that he was unaware of the fighter until the press conference, and stating that "for the sake of the several fans and attendees that flew in from all parts of the world to attend this past press conference, I was hesitant to create a huge disturbance by combating what was being said and for that I am truly sorry."
On November 16, 2018, Mayweather confirmed that a three-round exhibition boxing match against Nasukawa would indeed happen after the initial misunderstanding had been resolved.
The fight took place at the Saitama Super Arena in Japan on December 31 and ended on a TKO in the first round, when Nasukawa's corner waved off the fight after he had been knocked down three times. After the fight, Mayweather clarified that he is still retired and only did the fight to entertain fans. The match and its ending, however, were controversial, and drew condemnation and accusations of match-fixing. Mayweather reportedly earned $9 million for the fight.
On December 6, 2020, it was announced that Mayweather would face internet personality Logan Paul in an exhibition bout on February 20, 2021. The fight was postponed, and took place on June 6, 2021 at Hard Rock Stadium in Miami Gardens, Florida. On May 6, 2021, Mayweather and Paul met for the first time at a press conference at Hard Rock Stadium, where the latter's brother, Jake Paul, became involved in an angry brawl with Mayweather when he removed Mayweather's hat from his head. A visibly irate Mayweather was captured on video saying, "I'll kill you motherfucker! Are you crazy? I'll fuck you up, motherfucker. I don't play motherfucking games. I'll fuck you up."
The bout consisted of constant clinching initiated by Paul and went the full distance to the sound of boos from the crowd, with no winner being announced. Mayweather had started tentatively and defensively, reluctant to throw often and avoiding most of Paul's shots. Toward the end of the first round, Paul unleashed a wild flurry, but most of his punches were blocked by Mayweather's guard. The second round was similar to the first, with Mayweather content with the slow pace of the fight. He finally turned up the offense in the third, opening up with some clean left hooks that rocked Paul's head back, as well as mixing in his trademark pull counter with the right hand. From the fourth round onward, Paul was visibly fatigued and took every opportunity to utilize his weight advantage by tying the smaller Mayweather up in the clinch after every exchange. Despite Paul's constant attempts at neutering Mayweather's offense, the latter continued to dictate the pace of the fight and land the cleaner, more effective punches. Toward the end of the eighth and final round, Paul showboated when it became clear that he had done enough to avoid being stopped as most had predicted would be the case, and that he would survive to hear the final bell. Mayweather's superior boxing was reflected by the CompuBox punch stats, with Mayweather having landed 43 punches of 107 thrown (40.2%), compared to Paul's 28 landed of 217 thrown (12.9%).
In his post-fight interview, Mayweather praised his opponent, saying "He's better than I thought he was... he's a tough, rough competitor." Paul appeared to harbor some doubt about how seriously Mayweather had taken the fight, saying "I'm going to go home thinking, 'Did Floyd let me survive?'" When asked about the prospect of making a return to professional boxing, Mayweather replied, "I'm not coming back to the sport of boxing, absolutely not." He did not completely rule out participating in exhibition bouts in the future, saying "As far as me doing another exhibition, probably not".
On May 21, 2022 Mayweather fought an eight round exhibition boxing bout with one of his former sparring partners, Don Moore, in Abu Dhabi. Mayweather was in full control of the fight including scoring a knockdown to Moore with a punch to the body in the eighth round. Moore survived the knockdown and would go the full distance, there was no scoring and it ended without an official verdict.
On June 13, 2022 Mayweather announced he would be returning for another exhibition bout. The fight would be at the Rizin event scheduled on September 25, 2022 at the Saitama Super Arena. His opponent was confirmed to be Japanese mixed martial artist and YouTuber, Mikuru Asakura. Mayweather won by TKO in the 2nd round.
On September 25, 2022 Mayweather announced he would be facing YouTuber Deji Olatunji, the younger brother of KSI. The fight being scheduled for November 13, 2022 at the Coca-Cola Arena in Dubai. Mayweather defeated Deji via technical knockout in the 6th round.