Replies

[daprofessor]

self managed fighters such as bhop, roy jones and floyd mayweather do not rely on matchmakers and promoters (like pac and toprank) to pick their opposition because they are special talents that are capable of doing that on their own. it's a huge part of their success.

roy had his deal with hbo....and as a result we got to see him dominate over matched opposition for years. guys i never heard of like glenn kelly or the police officer that sold the bottom of his shoes for advertisement...and guys way past their primes like pazienza who had absolutely no business at super middle. he did some amazing things against those no-hopers. then he went up in weight and fought ruiz. prior to that though...he was avoiding his mandatory opponent, antonio tarver. everyone thought tarver would be killed by roy, myself included. tarver had to fight to be the mandatory twice. he knew something we didn't. roy didn't want any part of tarver. tarver called him out at the press conference for jones/ruiz and the world was shocked. the first fight happened and roy squeaked out victory and had a ton of excuses for winning. then the rematch happened. we all remember that.

bhop has been thee master at picking his opposition. he prides himself for "doing it his way" for all of these years. he's beat some great opposition along the way too! his best wins came against guys no one thought he could beat....tarver, pavlik and more recently....pascal. the potential opponent that no one paid attention to was dawson. a lot of fans feel bhop was avoiding dawson....but many more felt it was the right thing to do because after all...he wasn't a draw and dawson lost to pascal. and he looked like crap in his fight prior to hopkins. no way dawson belongs in the ring with bhop. then came the fight at the staples center where i believed bhop faked injury to get out of an inevitable ass whoopin. that theory was proven right imo after this past weekend when bad chad put it on bhop for several rounds in a fight that was more one sided than all of his losses combined.

notice the pattern? fighter picks opponents...he shines. forced to fight an opponent...no so much.

which brings me to floyd mayweather. arguably the most brilliant fighter of his time. he was voted fighter of the year in '98 and then again in '08. that alone is a huge accomplishment. but let's be honest....since his move up from 135....he has been picking and choosing his opposition in the same fashion as rjj and bhop and he's been shining. now....he's been forced to settle for miguel cotto because he has run out of options. on the surface it would appear that he chose miguel...but the honest truth is he didn't have any other options that would pay as much. so now...he's forced into this match that he chose to avoid when he retired after the hatton fight. will the pattern repeat? i think so.

i am now going on record....cotto is going to be the first fighter to beat floyd.

(then next month...when pac faces bradley...he's also going to lose. that doesn't apply here because pac isn't self managed. ) (IMG:style_emoticons/default/laugh.gif)

This post has been edited by daprofessor: May 1 2012, 08:32 PM

[Cshel86]

ALL of this...just to say that Cotto will be victorious on May 5th...Classic! Good stuff!

I like the breakdown, I really do.

RJJ: You're absolutely right, Jones fought a bunch of unknowns and so forth. It wasn't such a bad thing (in the viewer's mind) because he looked so good doing it. Fighters usually get passes when they defeat unknown/past prime fighters in a "highlight worthy" fashion.

When he ran into Tarver (which Im sure his pride got him into that situation), we saw something different. Like you said, in a way, he had to fight Tarver.

Hopkins: Correct, his biggest wins came against guys that he wasn't supposed to beat. Even when he lost fights, he made sure his opponents didn't "look so great" when their hands were raised in the end.

As for the Dawson fight (as you said), he didn't really have anyone else left to fight at LHW. There weren't huge height, arm length, and weight advantages for Dawson, but his style gave Bernard problems. If Hopkins was avoiding Dawson because of money, gate sales, PPV buys,etc...then he had reason enough to do so. Wouldn't you?

Dude has been on grandfather time for the longest, so I cant blame him for waiting it out. You would think that after all this time, Dawson would have done more to make himself more of an attraction, but he continued to beg for a Hopkins fight and say that "he's scared". Sergio Martinez seems to be having the same problem. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/laugh.gif)

Mayweather: Im not so sure that I would say he's been picking and choosing opponents after 135, because if memory serves me correctly, he wasn't a free agent until after the Judah fight, which of course was at WW in 2006.

I agree that he's out of opponents at this point, at least until after some of these currently scheduled WW bouts take place. Too bad he didn't have that much time to pick a guy, but hell, that's what step-aside money is for.

I cant even say that he avoided Miguel after he fought Hatton and retired, let's remember that Cotto was THE top fighter at TR, and Floyd was about a year removed from his TR contract that he bought out of, which Im sure fueled the Mayweather/Arum feud.

Think about it, if Floyd cant even do business with Arum now (5 years after the fact), then imagine how touchy that situation would've been back then.

Im with your theory about these fighters though, Cotto could very well be the guy to pull it off. I swear these betting odds are getting wider and wider, which could be a possible of something backwards happening.