:format(webp)/cdn.vox-cdn.com/imported_assets/253834/capt.7115c96655c94251983750063272cf9a.aptopix_mayweather_marquez_boxing_nvdp127.jpg)
Floyd Mayweather Jr. returned to the professional rings with a dominant, completely one-sided performance over a clearly smaller, slower, and overmatched Juan Manuel Marquez, winning an easy unanimous decision to improve to 40-0 (25) in his career.
It was the fight the naysayers feared. Mayweather won on scores of 120-107, 119-108 and 118-109, and Bad Left Hook saw it even wider, at 120-105. Marquez (50-5-1, 37 KO) was knocked down hard on a left hook in the second round, and I scored two other rounds 10-8 as well. The fight was nothing like a competitive event, really, with Mayweather winning basically every moment of the fight.
Final CompuBox punch stats were just absurd:
Mayweather: 290/493, 59%
Marquez: 69/583, 12%
Marquez was never in this fight, overwhelmed physically from the start. He was unable to do anything offensively, his defense was broken apart, and he ate good, clean shot after good, clean shot. We'll have more tomorrow, but little more about this fight, but rather what could be next for both. It's exactly what it was, a complete rout. There's nothing more to analyze. Floyd Mayweather absolutely destroyed Juan Manuel Marquez.
After the bout, Shane Mosley was in the ring and confronted Mayweather for a future fight. It seems like a probable ploy, and I'd actually expect Mayweather-Mosley is next. Good post-fight commercial.
On the undercard
Chris John defeated Rocky Juarez in their WBA featherweight title rematch, winning on scores of 117-111, 119-109 and 114-113. Bad Left Hook had it 117-111 for John. John again tired late in the bout, as he did against Juarez in February, and the drama got high in the final two rounds, especially in the 12th round when John was badly shaken on a short left hook. John survived the round and the fight.
Michael Katsidis dominated Vicente Escobedo with pressure and power punching, but the official scores were closer than Bad Left Hook's 119-109 Katsidis card. Escobedo won Mike Fitzgerald's card 116-112, but the other two went to Katsidis, 115-113 and 118-110. Katsidis is now the mandatory challenger to Juan Manuel Marquez's WBO lightweight title. I don't think Escobedo was bad, really, and certainly not as bad as my score may indicate. But he just plain lost the rounds.
In the PPV opener, Cornelius Lock dropped Orlando Cruz in the first round and knocked him out in the fourth in an entertaining, back-and-forth fight where Cruz really was the more accurate man by far, but Lock simply landed the much harder shots.
