Marcos Maidana (35-5, 31 KOs) resorted to biting tonight but it still didn’t help him against WBA/WBC welterweight champion Floyd Mayweather Jr (47-0, 26 KOs) who easily registered his 47th consecutive win on Saturday night at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nevada. Maidana took Mayweather’s left hand out of commission in the 8th round after allegedly biting Mayweather hard on his fingers of of his left hand while he had him in a headlock.
The referee Kenny Bayless didn’t see the bite by Maidana so he couldn’t do anything about it. Never the less, Mayweather was unable to use his left hand again with regularity until a couple rounds later. What was interesting is that Maidana denied biting Mayweather after the fight even though a replay showed Maidana appearing to bite Mayweather.
“He may have had his hand inside my mouth but I didn’t bite him. Maybe he thinks I’m a dog, but I never bit him,” Maidana said. “Throughout the fight he was rubbing my eyes with his gloves. I think I won. I think I won the fight. If the judges want to give the fight to a guy who runs then so be it. I was the aggressor.”
The judges scored the fight 115-112, 116-111, 116-111. I thought the 115-112 was far too close. I had Mayweather winning 10 rounds to 2, and anything more than would be charity to Maidana, because he was missing all night long and fouling like mad.
In the 10th, Maidana took his forearm and jammed it into Mayweather’s face, forcing him to the canvas. Referee Kenny Bayless then took a point off from Maidana for the foul.
Mayweather did an excellent job of hitting and moving all night long. It was like watching Mayweather from 10 years ago when he was in his early part of his career. The only time Mayweather was hit was usually when he’d back up against the ropes and try to box off of them.
“He bit my hand and that caused my fingers to be numb. I couldn’t use my hand for a while because my finders were numb,” Mayweather said.”I felt sharper in the first fight. My fingers felt numb after the 8th round. I give my self a C minus. I got hit with some shots I shouldn’t have got hit with.”
At the end of the 3rd round, Maidana hurt Mayweather with a right hand to the head that stiffened Mayweather’s legs. In the 4th, Maidana had his best round of the fight when he trapped Mayweather against the ropes and hammered him with some really heavy shots.
After the fight, Showtime’s Jim Gray tried to get Mayweather to comment on whether he’d like to fight Manny Pacquiao next. Mayweather said that he needs to talk with his team to decide on who he should fight next. He also said that Pacquiao has fight in front of him that he still needs to get by against Chris Algieri on November 22nd.
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The undercard was disappointing with the exception of the John Molina vs. Humberto Soto fight. That was easily the only good fight on the undercard, as the rest of the fights were either boring one terribly one-sided with the A-side fighter dominating the action in fights that arguably should have never been a part of the Mayweather-Maidana 2 card.
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In the chief support on the card, if you want to call it that, WBC super bantamweight champion Leo Santa Cruz (28-0-1, 16 KOs) destroyed Manuel Roman (17-3-3, 6 KOs) in a 2nd round KO. Santa Cruz teed off on the weaker, less skilled Roman until knocking him out in the 2nd round with a right hand. What was unusual was the fight fans didn’t get excited about the victory, and the reason for that was Roman was never remotely competitive even for an instant. He looked like someone who had stepped into a cage with an angry tiger. Roman did not belong in the ring with Santa Cruz, and he just looked frightened all the way up until Santa Cruz stopped him.
Clearly, Santa Cruz’s management wanted to make him good by putting him in with the equivalent of Rod Salka, but in this case it didn’t work. The fight was too one-sided and there was no real gain from the fight for Santa Cruz other than the $750,000 that he was paid for the mismatch. It’s surprising that Showtime green-lighted this mismatch because it’s a fight that should have never taken place in my view.
“I’m not scared to fight you, Rigondeaux. I’m not scared of fighting nobody,” Santa Cruz said after the fight.
I’d say the odds are about zero that Santa Cruz’s adviser Al Haymon and Golden Boy Promotions will let him fight Guillermo Rigondeaux. If Showtime is willing to pay good money to televise his mismatches against the likes of Manuel Roman, then why should Haymon and Golden Boy have Santa Cruz risk his hide against someone who can actually fight like Rigondeaux. Besides, Rigondeaux is far, far better than Santa Cruz will ever be in my view.
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In what some boxing fans are calling a robbery, Mayweather Promotions fighter #10 IBF Mickey Bey (21-1-1, 10 KOs) defeated IBF lightweight champion Miguel Vazquez (34-4, 13 KOs) by a 12 round split decision. Bey fought poorly for the first 6 rounds in getting beaten to the punch by Vazquez. In the last half of the fight, Bey was able to catch a fading Vazquez frequently with shots while he was attempting to hold. Vazquez was holding after every punch he threw tonight, and he was able to get away with it.
The scores were 115-113 and 119-109 for Bey, and 115-113 for Vazquez. The 119-109 score was just incredibly bad any way you look at it. I had Vazquez winning the fight by a couple of rounds.
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In a minor upset, James De La Rosa (23-2, 13 KOs) defeated Alfredo Angulo (22-5, 18 KOs) by a 10 round unanimous decision. It’s obvious that De La Rosa was supposed to be the B-side in this fight, but Golden Boy messed up by matching Angulo with a guy a little too good for him tonight. After the way that Angulo was battered and beaten in his last two fights in stoppage losses to Saul “Canelo” Alvarez and Erislandy Lara, Golden Boy did Angulo no favors by putting him in with a good but hardly great fighter like De La Rosa. The judges scored the fight 98-90, 96-92 and 99-89.
Angulo had De La Rosa hurt in the 9th and 10th rounds, but due to Angulo’s lack of hand speed, he was unable to finish him off. Angulo was never a fast fighter when he turned pro in 2005, but he clearly has lost hand speed in the last 9 years and isn’t the fighter that he was when he turned pro in 2005. He was slow then, but not as slow as he is now. At 32, Angulo is just too slow to defeat guys that he likely would have beaten badly earlier in his career.
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In by far the best fight on the night, Humberto Soto (65-8-2, 35 KOs) defeated John Molina (27-5, 22 KOs) by a 10 round unanimous decision by the scores of 96-91, 95-92 and 95-92. Soto appeared to play referee Jay Nady by dropping to the canvas in agony every time Molina would even get near his belt line with a low blow. It looked like a great acting job, and Nady bought it by taking points away from Molina for low blows in the 6th and 7th rounds. When Molina was hit low, Nady didn’t do anything until the 10th round when he finally took a point off from Soto.
The constant points deductions for low blows marred what was otherwise an exciting fight. This fight was so much better than any other fight on the card that it wasn’t even funny. I just don’t know how Showtime and Golden Boy didn’t have the foresight to make this the co-feature and have the Leo Santa Cruz vs. his ex-sparring partner Manuel Roman as the off TV fight, because it was just a terrible fight and didn’t belong on the PPV portion of the card in my view. The same with Angulo-De La Rosa. I saw that as a good off TV fight, but definitely not worth paying for on PPV.
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Other action on tonight’s “Mayhem” Card:
Armando Lopes UD 6 Damian Alejandro
Fabian Andres Maidana TKO 1 Jared Teer
Kevin Newman II SD 4 Azamat Umarzoda
