Boxing’s Welterweight Floodgates are Now Open

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If there’s one thing we now know about Floyd Mayweather Jr., other than he’s a profligate spender and boxes beautifully if not particularly excitingly, it’s that he’s a lot better at winning fights than scoring them.

The presumably retired Mayweather took his ringside seat at the Staples Center in Los Angeles during the third round of Saturday’s bout for the vacant WBC welterweight championship between Danny Garcia and Robert Guerrero, possibly on a busman’s holiday or maybe on a scouting mission just in case he is contemplating a comeback that most fight fans believe is inevitable.

Queried by Premier Boxing Champions on Fox broadcast crew member Mark Kriegel during the one-minute break between the 10th and 11th rounds of a fight Garcia clearly was on his way to winning, “Money” opined that “As of right now, I give an edge to Guerrero, but, you know, Danny Garcia’s a young, hungry lion, so anything can happen.”

Mayweather also said he was happy to be enjoying more family time with his children, and “as of right now, I don’t have the urge to fight.”

While the pro-Guerrero crowd of 12,052 booed the unanimous decision for Garcia -- judges Steve Weisfeld, Max DeLuca and Rey Danseco all saw it at 116-112, which seemed about right -- that probably owed to the fact that Guerrero, a Mexican-American from nearby Gilroy, California, had a built-in constituency that unofficially voted with its collective heart instead of its head.

Although he came forward and was periodically successful in pressing the action, especially in the early rounds, Guerrero (33-4-1, 18 KOs), a southpaw, both was outlanded (108 of 436, 25 percent, to Garcia’s 163 to 496, 33 percent) and outgunned, as Garcia (32-0, 18 KOs), a Philadelphian of Puerto Rican descent, landed the cleaner, harder shots. That was confirmed by Garcia’s even more pronounced edge in power punches (156 of 342, 45.6 percent, to Guerrero’s 87 of 320, 27 percent).

“It was what I expected,” said Garcia, 27, a former WBC/WBA super lightweight champion who was making only his second ring appearance as a full-fledged welterweight. “I knew I would win at least eight or nine rounds, but Guerrero is tough. No one has ever stopped him.”

Guerrero, for his part, might be the victim of the three-strikes-and-you’re-out club; this was his third bid to win a world welterweight title and his third whiff, having previously lost decisions to Mayweather and Keith Thurman, another one of the commentators for the PBC telecast. At 32, the scrappy southpaw known as “The Ghost” might finally be out of chances to capture a 147-pound belt, and he did not go gentle into that good night, choosing instead to rage, rage against the apparent dying of his light as a serious contender.

“I want a rematch,” Guerrero huffed. “Not one person out there thought Danny won but his team. I pressured him, I nailed him, busted his body up. I outjabbed him. I thought I won the fight. The crowd thought I won the fight.”

Crowd reaction, of course, is generally not the most reliable method of determining who did or didn’t win a boxing match. Had Saturday’s fight -- which earlier this month the WBC elevated to a scrap for the vacant championship after officials of the Mexico City-based organization decided they had waited long enough for Mayweather to return to work -- played out exactly the same but in Philadelphia or Atlantic City, the nod for Garcia would have drawn lusty cheers.

What is notable is that Garcia’s victory is the first of several toppling dominoes that will soon determine the future of a Mayweather-less welterweight division, one that is presently without an undisputed king but does or will soon have a surfeit of princes.

Next up in the weeding-out process is the March 12 defense by WBA welterweight champ Thurman (26-0, 22 KOs) against the dangerous Shawn Porter (26-1-1, 16 KOs), a former IBF 147-pound titlist, in Uncasville, Connecticut. From there, it’s on to the farewell (maybe) fight for WBO welter ruler Manny Pacquiao (57-6-2, 38 KOs) against former WBO welter champ Timothy Bradley Jr. (33-3-1, 13 KOs).

If the impromptu campaigning by Thurman and his fellow PBC broadcasters is any indication, a Garcia-Thurman unification fight might well happen sometime before the end of 2016; and if that one isn’t exactly on a par with the first matchup of, say, young welterweight sensations Sugar Ray Leonard and Thomas Hearns on Sept. 16, 1981, it’s at least a reasonably acceptable substitute.

“Would I like to fight him? I would love to fight him,” Thurman said when asked if he would like it get it on with Garcia, who, like him, is 27 years of age and in the full bloom of his prime. “It’d be a great fight, two undefeated welterweights. You see the power [Garcia] possesses, you know the power I possess. That green [WBC] belt looks pretty good. I would like to see it around my waist.”

It can be argued that the best of the best from 30 or so years ago were better than the top guys now, which is most obviously valid in a watered-down heavyweight division. However, there is something to be said for competitive depth, and the mix-and-match possibilities at welterweight now are intriguing and seemingly endless, especially if Mayweather and Pacquiao get the itch to lace up the gloves again.

Even without “Money” and “Pac-Man,” all those available TV dates need to be filled with bouts whose outcomes are not always foregone conclusions. In addition to Garcia, Thurman and the 28-year-old Porter, the talent pool includes IBF welterweight ruler Kell Brook (35-0, 24 KOs), Bradley (especially if he beats Pacquiao in their rubber match), Amir Khan (31-3, 19 KOs), Sadam Ali (22-0, 13 KOs), Errol Spence Jr. (19-0, 16 KOs), the “New” Ray Robinson (20-2, 9 KOs) and such oldies with recognizable names as Marcos Maidana (36-5, 31 KOs) and Shane Mosley (49-9-1, 41 KOs).

If you want to say the welterweight division has the ingredients to spice more tasty dishes on its menu than any other weight class, you wouldn’t be wrong. At light heavyweight, the possibilities are not as far-reaching. WBA/IBF/WBO champion Sergey Kovalev (28-0-1, 25 KOs) defends those belts on Jan. 30 in Montreal against former WBC/IBO titlist Jean Pascal (30-3-1, 17 KOs) in an attractive rematch; and he has potential for down-the-line bouts with WBC champ Adonis “Superman” Stevenson (27-1, 22 KOs) and a bulked-up WBA/IBF middleweight champ Gennady Golovkin (34-0, 31 KOs).

Fortunately, PBC on Fox, the network’s first fight to be televised in prime time since Dec. 16, 1995, when Mike Tyson knocked out Buster Mathis Jr. in Philadelphia, had more going for it than just Garcia-Guerrero. The two preceding TV fights were good lead-ins to the main event, not only from a boxing standpoint but as interesting backstories.

In the opener, heavyweight Amir Mansour (22-2-1, 16 KOs), loading up on every punch, seemed determined to knock out the much larger Dominic Breazeale (17-0, 15 KOs) as quickly and emphatically as possible, and the muscular southpaw came close to scoring one when he floored the former University of Northern Colorado quarterback with a right hook in the third round. Maybe the early action was so frantic because, as Kriegel noted, “it is an elimination fight: one’s 43 and the other is a football player.”

However, with Mansour ahead on all three judges’ scorecards, Brezeale landed two ripping right crosses in the closing seconds of the fifth round. When Mansour returned to his corner, he advised his trainer, Calvin Davis, that he could not close his jaw, which turned out to be broken. Davis informed referee Raul Caiz Jr. of the situation, and Caiz awarded Brezeale a technical knockout victory.

Mansour’s courage and heart can never be doubted, but his conclusion that he was not physically able to continue served as a reminder of what Muhammad Ali forced himself to endure in the first of his three bouts with Ken Norton on March 31, 1973 in San Diego. Ali made the mistake of taking Norton lightly and came in overweight and underprepared, which might have contributed to the broken jaw he suffered early in the 12-rounder, most likely the fourth. Ali, his jaw grotesquely swollen, somehow made it to the final bell in losing a split decision. “It was a very bad break,” said Dr. Gary Manchester, who wired Ali’s mouth shut. “The bone which was broken had three or four jagged edges. He had so much pain during the fight that he’s totally exhausted now.” It’s just another reason why many agree with Ali’s self-proclaimed title of “Greatest of All Time.”

In the middle act of the TV tripleheader, welterweight and Iraqi war veteran Sammy Vazquez (21-0, 15 KOs), a nonstop puncher, scored a sixth-round stoppage of Aron Martinez (20-5-1, 4 KOs). A former sergeant in the United States Army, Vasquez suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder and sees a therapist every Friday. Interestingly, as Kriegel noted, “one of the ways he fights his demons is to fight.”

“It’s therapy,” added Thurman.

Bernard Fernandez, a five-term president of the Boxing Writers Association of America, received the Nat Fleischer Award from the BWAA in April 1999 for lifetime achievement and was inducted into the Pennsylvania Boxing Hall of Fame in 2005, as well as the New Jersey Boxing Hall of Fame in 2013. The New Orleans-born sports writer has worked in the industry since 1969 and pens a weekly column on the Sweet Science for Sherdog.com.