For two rounds, it looked as though Gilroy welterweight boxer Robert Guerrero’s prophecy might come true. In front of 15,880 at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas on Saturday night, Guerrero saw his long-odds dream come true of fighting the sport’s biggest draw, Floyd Mayweather, in a pay-per-view main event.
Unfortunately for Guerrero, after two rounds of mild success in those relatively even early rounds, hardly anything went his way. Guerrero survived an attempted assault of hundreds of straight right hands but found himself on the losing end of a wide unanimous decision.
For Guerrero, it was his first appearance on the sport’s biggest stage against a fighter in the class of Mayweather, who has appeared in pay-per-view headliners since 2005 and is the highest grossing athlete in all sports. Guerrero was guaranteed $3 million for the fight, three times any amount he has made in prior bouts.
Guerrero (31-2-1) enjoyed a successful opening round as he forced a rough fight on the inside in the clinch while Mayweather searched for his stride. Guerrero, 30, continued to press the fight in the second round as Mayweather got untracked.
From round three on, Guerrero found himself in the line of Mayweather’s straight right hand at a wildly accurate rate, as punch stat numbers provided by CompuBox showed he landed 60 percent of his power punches. Guerrero’s accuracy dropped as the fight wore on, and numbers showed he landed only 19 percent of his total punches.
Mayweather (44-0) began picking Guerrero apart along the middle rounds, opening up a cut after strafing him with more right hands in the eighth round.
Mayweather, 36, was working with his father Floyd Sr. in the corner for the first time in 13 years as his uncle Roger suffers from an illness.
“I got hit with shots in my last fight with Miguel Cotto that I shouldn’t have got hit with, so I had to bring in the defensive master, my father, back into camp,” Mayweather said at the post-fight press conference.
Guerrero was making his third appearance in the 147-pound weight division, and though he suffered a clear loss with all three scores reading 117-111, Guerrero will have plenty of options when he does return to the ring.
“I came up short tonight but I’m still going to praise God tonight,” Guerrero said after the fight, as the fighter’s Christian faith was a major point of publicity throughout the promotion.
Another large plot to the fight was the tension between the two father-trainers, as Guerrero is trained by his father Ruben. The elder Guerrero tried upsetting Mayweather earlier in fight week by calling attention to the domestic assault misdemeanor that landed Mayweather in prison last summer. In the end, the two fathers didn’t play a negative factor in the actual fight, though Ruben Guerrero claimed in the ring after the final bell that Mayweather was “a chicken who ran.”
Guerrero lasted the distance, but came closest to tasting the canvas in the eighth round when Mayweather wobbled him after landing 23 of 30 power punches, an unusually high number. Guerrero had moments throughout the latter portion of the fight, but never enough to find himself back in the thick of the contest.
Mayweather all but gave away the twelfth round after sweeping rounds three through eleven on most scorecards.
For Guerrero next, he is scheduled to be in court later this month to face charges stemming from allegations he illegally brought a firearm into New York at John F. Kennedy airport.
