Five-division world champion and future Hall-of-Famer, Floyd ‘Money’ Mayweather Jr turned 42 today. He was born on 24th February 1977 in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Rising from abstract poverty to becoming the richest athlete in the world, Floyd has come a long way.
Over his 21-year long professional career, Floyd has had 50 fight and he has won every single one of them. He, however, started boxing when he extremely young as boxing was a part of their family tradition. His father, Mayweather Sr was a welterweight contender who fought the likes of Sugar Ray Leonard. He is now a terrific coach having trained legends like Oscar De La Hoya, Chad Dawson, Laila Ali etc. His uncle, Roger Mayweather is also a terrific trainer and has trained Jr for the most part of his career.
Floyd’s rise to stardom has been a no secret. From winning Olympic bronze medal to winning world titles across five-weight class and from fighting on the undercard of other top boxers to becoming a pay-per-view king who has sold close to 25 Million PPVs and generated $2 Billion in revenue throughout his career, Floyd’s rise has been nothing short of phenomenal.
However, on the occasion of his 42nd birthday, we take a look back at his 42nd fight who is infamous amongst boxing fans around the world.
On 17th September at the MGM Grand Arena in Las Vegas, Floyd Mayweather Jr fought rugged Mexican-American Victor Ortiz for the WBC world welterweight title. In this fight, for the first three round, Jr seemed to control the composure of the fight, he was clearly outboxing Oritz through three rounds. But in the fourth round, Ortiz started intentional headbutt and that busted Mayweather’s face. The referee Joe Cortez interfered and deducted a point of Ortiz.
In the corner, Ortiz hugged Mayweather and admitted to intentional wrongdoings. Then Cortez signalled both fighters to continue fighting and then Ortiz tried to hug Jr and Mayweather seemed to have hugged him back, but as soon as both guys separated Mayweather threw a hard left hook and knocked Ortiz out.
During the post-fight interview, he said, “In the ring, you have to protect yourself at all times, After it happened, we touched gloves and we were back to fighting and then I threw the left hook and right hand after the break. You just gotta protect yourself at all times.”
After the fight, Floyd got into an argument with HBO commentator Larry Merchant and said he should be fired by the premium network company.
To which Merchant replied by saying, “I wish I was 50 years younger and I’d kick your ass!” [CLICK here to read the full interview transcript].
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