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Don't follow boxing very often, but you want to know the gist of Saturday's mega-fight between Floyd Mayweather and Robert Guerrero? Follow boxing all the time, and want one place that rounds up all the links about the welterweight showdown you could ever want? This Ultimate Guide to the May 4 pay-per-view bout is for you, no matter what kind of fan you are.
(Floyd Mayweather, left, Robert Guerrero, right; via)
We begin, as usual, with our own work. I contemplated whether Guerrero was worthy, the marketing of the bout and what it means for the sport. Alex McClintock previewed the undercard, which is, most agree, pretty good. I evaluated the mental and physical attributes Mayweather and Guerrero bring to the ring. I supplied a full preview and prediction of Mayweather-Guerrero. A roundtable of staffers – McClintock, Jeff Pryor, Andrew Harrison, Patrick Connor and me – discussed the PPV. And if you want to get more audio-visual, check out Queensberry Rules Boxing Radio’s discussion of the weekend ahead, hosted by Connor and James Foley of Bad Left Hook, with a guest appearance from yours truly.
Usually, the best way to get a sense of what each man brings to the ring is HBO’s “Greatest Hits” videos, but this bout will air on Showtime and they don’t do that. I’ve included a one-minute highlight clip below that doesn’t do anyone justice, so here’s an old Mayweather greatest hits video, and one clip each of the most recent bouts featuring Floyd and Robert. Showtime’s All Access show has done a reasonably good job of telling each man’s story outside the ring, albeit with a big emphasis on Mayweather. You can watch some complete episodes on Showtime Sports’s YouTube channel, and if you have any kind of On Demand service, you should find those episodes as well as a number of other similar documentary/marketing series (“30 Days In May,” “Mayweather,” etc.) along with a variety of full fights in each boxer’s career. BoxRec has the entire career records of Mayweather and Guerrero.
Interested? I hope you have a fat wallet. Watching it on pay-per-view will cost you $59.95 or $69.95, depending on whether you want to go standard or high-def. And there’s no Tecate rebate program, like there is for some Top Rank-promoted bouts. If you want to save some cash and are near one of the theaters hosting a big-screen showing, you’ll pay at least $18 for the community experience. The Mayweather-Guerrero start time for the PPV is 9 p.m., with some preliminaries on regular Showtime starting at 7 p.m., but don’t expect Mayweather and Guerrero to get into the ring against each other until right around midnight. If you want to catch the weigh-in, that’s today (Friday) at 6 p.m. ET. It’ll air on Showtime live, as well as on ESPN’s SportsCenter, and probably about a half-dozen other places.
If you want to see how the biggest mainstream media outlets have covered the Mayweather-Guerrero story, here are some links: USA Today examines the father-son pairings of Mayweather-Guerrero. The Wall Street Journal considers Mayweather’s place in boxing history. The Los Angeles Times profiles Guerrero’s personal story. Sports Illustrated summarizes Guerrero’s slow rise in the boxing ring, and how Mayweather’s jail stint affected him (also the subject of a New York Daily News piece). ESPN’s Fight Credential has a ton of material. No word from The New York Times (which sometimes gets involved in covering these big bouts) or The Washington Post (which never does).
Usually we use this space to play a guessing game about how many pay-per-view buys the bout will do, but instead we have a poll going on that and one other topic at our Facebook page. Go vote!
We end on a more comical note. The dads of Floyd and Robert have talked as much about fighting each other as they have talked about their sons’ battle, so below is a highlight video of trash-talking that features awkward one-armed push-ups and the sound “brrrrldap.” Mayweather has a rematch clause – assuming he loses to Guerrero, and assuming Ruben and Floyd Sr. don’t duke it out at the weigh-in or in the ring after the bout, why not have the fathers stage a Mayweather-Guerrero do-over?
