THE V2 DREAM FIGHT SERIES: EPISODE 1
In 2013, Ray Leonard was asked, not for the first time, what he thought of Floyd Mayweather Jr and how he thought he'd have fared against him had they competed in the same era. "I'm so impressed with Mayweather Jr," Leonard replied. "You know, he reminds me a lot of his father, Floyd Sr. I fought his father in 1978 - I knocked him out."
And with that, the debate was cracked wide open again. Sugar Ray Leonard against the Floyd Mayweather Jr, a Welterweight showdown, both at their best - who wins, and how?
Mayweather
vs
Leanord
For a while, it might have been considered almost sacrilegious to talk up Mayweather's chances in this one. Boxing in today's age isn't like it was back in the late seventies and early eighties when Leonard was in his glorious peak. For many, fighters are too protected now, and of course how can anyone argue the case for Mayweather to beat Leonard when his greatest wins have come against opponents of a clearly lower quality than the men Leonard had his finest nights against?
But Mayweather is 37, yet still turning in exemplary displays against legitimate opponents and showing no real signs of decline. On the other hand, a 34 year old Leonard was handed an embarrassing beating by the young upstart Terry Norris in 1991, and two years before that, had needed a fortunate and generous draw verdict to hold on to his WBC Super-Middleweight belt against his old rival
Thomas Hearns - and make no mistake, 1989 was definitely not Hearns' prime. We can argue back and forth all day about why Mayweather's peak has sustained itself so much longer than Ray's did, but whatever reason you come up, with each Mayweather victory comes more adulation and more silenced critics, to the point where current / former professionals who now serve as pundits such as Paulie Malignaggi and Johnny Nelson have theorised that, in Mayweather, we're looking at the single greatest boxer of all time, and a man who'd beat anyone in history - even those from the more storied and glorified eras such as Leonard's.
First off, the case for Leonard. One of boxing's ultimate dictums is that a good big'un will beat a good little'un. Well, Leonard is the naturally bigger man here - not just in height and reach, but more importantly in natural weight.