04.11.06 – By Karen Belford: New WBC welterweight champion Floyd Mayweather (37-0, 24 KOs) won a unanimous 12-round decision over Carlos Baldomir(43-10-6, 13 KOs) tonight at the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino, in Las Vegas. Along the way, however, Mayweather, 29, was far from impressive, choosing to stay mostly on the outside rather than mixing it up with the tough Baldomir. Of course, Mayweather did what he had to do to win, and easily controlled the fight, often making Baldomir, 35, look like an unskilled amateur fighter..
Yet, Mayweather’s constant running from Baldomir, it seems to me, was awful to look at and left me with a bad impression of him. I honestly don’t mind watching defensive fighters, but at some point, their act turns stale, as was the case tonight. That’s just my take on things. However, many people in the crowd obviously shared my thoughts, judging by their shower of boos they rained on Mayweather in the final round of the fight, when they grew tired of his timid fighting style. It was so bad in the last couple of rounds, the fans literally were walking out of the fight before the ending.
Going into the fight, it was no secret that Baldomir was going to attempt to put heavy pressure on Mayweather, and attempt to trap him against the ropes, to try and negate Mayweather’s superior ring movement.
However, from the first round on, it was painfully obvious that Baldomir’s hand speed and reaction time was too slow to contend with Mayweather’s quick, darting attacks. No matter how many times he would try to press the attack on Mayweather, Baldomir often came empty, badly missing his punches again and again. Outside of a few lucky shots landed in each round, Baldomir’s high punch output strategy was a total failure. In the end, Baldomir managed to only land a paltry 79 of 670 punches thrown, while Mayweather had a much higher connect percentage, landing 199 of 458 punches.
The final judges’ scores were 120-108, 120-108, and 118-110. As far as I’m concerned, Mayweather won every round, easily. That’s not to say that Mayweather didn’t get his share of bruises, because he certainly did, judging from the angry looking swelling on his right cheek. Clearly, this was no easy fight for him, despite his relative dominance over Baldomir.
However, in many instances, Baldomir was able to land an occasional hard shot, which only seemed to make Mayweather focus even more on his defensive tactics. In fact, after taking a few hard shots in the first round, Mayweather steered clear of attempting to slug it out with Baldomir.
Mayweather is reported to have made 8 million for this fight, which I personally feel was an absurd amount of money to be paid, considering the performance I witnessed tonight. If anything, Baldomir should have been been given the lion’s share, for he seemed to be putting out energy the entire fight, trying to catch up with Mayweather. Let’s not forget, Baldomir never was anywhere near as skilled as Mayweather, yet he was talented enough to have him in full flight for much of the bout.
As such, Mayweather moves forward, perhaps to face Oscar De La Hoya, possibly early next year. Unlike the majority of boxing fans, this matchup doesn’t interest me in the least. If Mayweather wants to prove something, than I say, face someone like Antonio Margarito or Paul Williams, and then let’s see how well Mayweather does. As things stand now, I’m not impressed with him.