Santoliquito: Is Floyd Mayweather Better Than Muhammad Ali?
LAS VEGAS, NV (CBS) — Floyd Mayweather Jr. proudly wears a hat that brandishes "TBE" across the front. It means "The Best Ever," and in the mind of the 38-year-old undefeated future Hall of Famer, he really feels that.
He had no problem telling ESPN's Stephen A. Smith that, "No one can ever brainwash me to make me believe that Sugar Ray Robinson and Muhammad Ali was better than me. No one could ever brainwash me and tell me that. But one thing I will do—I'm going to take my hat off to them and respect those guys because those are the guys that paved the way for me to be where I'm attoday.
"Leon Spinks beat (Ali) when he had seven fights. They'd never put a fighter in there with Floyd Mayweather with seven fights. So you gonna tell me that it's cool to lay on the ropes and take punishment and let a man tire himself out from beating you and then he basically fatigued? You hit him with a few punches and he go down and quit, and you want to be glorified for that?"
For the May 2 megafight, Mayweather, 47-0, with 26 KOs, may be better than his opponent, Manny "Pac-Man" Pacquiao, but belonging on the pantheon with an all-time great like Ali, who fought killers in his prime, that is a far different story.
Mayweather is without question this generation's best fighter. He is a Hall of Famer. He is an all-time great. And he's also a victim of his era.
Ali fought in the greatest period of heavyweight boxing, having to contend with Joe Frazier, George Foreman, Ken Norton, Ron Lyle, Earnie Shavers, Jerry Quarry, Sonny Liston—and he caught the latter stages of Floyd Patterson and Archie Moore.
Beating Pacquiao, a smaller, somewhat shopworn, by pound-by-pound standards, opponent, won't elevate Mayweather to the iconic status of Ali. Nothing will—and that's not Mayweather's fault.
It's the curse of any fighter coming up in this time, filled with a shallow talent pool that began thinning considerably at the start of the 1990s.
The corner boxing gym is gone. So, too, are the many kids that were eager to fight. Track the trajectory of the sport and its typically followed its success by hard socio-economic times.
In the 1920s and through the 1950s, immigrants entering in America had it harshest, and many turned to boxing as a way out. In the 1950s and through the 1970s, more African-Americans turned toward the sweet science. Today, the former Russian Eastern bloc countries are dominant—with Sergey Kovalev, Gennady Golovkin and Wladimir Klitschko ruling the fighting landscape.
Why?
Because economic challenges are pushing Eastern European kids into boxing gyms.
Floyd Mayweather picked up boxing because his family fought. Pacquiao picked up the sport because he was dirt poor growing up and sought an avenue to a better life.
Though Ali grew up in a middleclass environment, Frazier, Foreman, Liston, and Norton weren't exactly part of the privileged silver-spoon club.
Ali and Robinson, and all-time greats like them, faced men who literally knew what it was like to be hungry. Fighters from these last few generations not so much.
It's not Floyd Mayweather's fault he's not as good as Ali.
