Will Mayweather revert to form in the Cotto buildup?

By John F. McKenna (McJack): Undefeated superstar World Boxing Council (WBC) welterweight champion Floyd Mayweather Jr. (42-0, 26 KO’s) has left boxing pundits scratching their heads with his laid back behavior in the kick off of the build up for his showdown with WBA light middleweight champion Miguel Cotto (37-2, 30 KO’s). Mayweather and Cotto will do battle on May 5 at the MGM Grand Arena in Las Vegas.


Normally “Money” Mayweather begins the build up for one of his fights by first telling the world what a wonderful and magnificent fighter he is. Floyd then usually follows that up by running down his opponents accomplishments in the ring, and by resorting to every means possible to humiliate them.


In stark contrast to the norm for Mayweather he has had nothing but positive things to say about his May 5th opponent. The trash talk, which Floyd is a master of, was largely missing at the compulsory stare down at the New York press conference designed to hype the fight.

It has been part of Mayweather’s persona for years to put his bad boy image out there. That is what his legions of fans expect to see from their hero. So the question boxing observers are asking is why the sudden change in Floyd’s demeanor for the Cotto fight build up?

Part of the reason may be that Cotto has demonstrated in the past that he does not easily get rattled. Miguel handled master trash talker Ricardo Mayorga with ease. Ricardo was not able to get a reaction out of Cotto and fought a disciplined fight and wound up stopping Mayorga.

It is also possible that Floyd is attempting to make it appear to boxing fans as though Cotto has a real chance of defeating him. Despite all the talk of Miguel being dehydrated when he fought Manny Pacquiao, many boxing observes still see him as just being a “Pacman” leftover.

Mayweater is in the unenviable position of not wanting to trash talk an opponent who many fans think doesn’t belong in the ring with him. It’s pretty difficult to build up an opponent to make him appear worthy and then trash talk the same opponent.

It will be interesting to see how long it takes for Floyd to revert back to his normal behavior of trash talking his opponent.