Mayweather vs Ortiz: Floyd Continues to Promise a Knockout

Floyd Mayweather Jr continues to boast that he'll stop Victor Ortiz inside the distance tomorrow night on HBO pay-per-view, saying that the young Mexican-American powerhouse won't have the chance to go into survival mode as past Mayweather opponents have done:

"Every opponent who comes to fight gets knocked out. When Mosley caught me with a good shot, I dug deep and then all he did was survive. Against Marquez, I was beating him so bad that he went into survival mode. Ortiz won't be able to go into survival mode, he won't be able to."

I would disagree a bit that Marquez went into survival mode -- I don't believe he truly did. I just think he couldn't do anything with Floyd. I'm not even sure Mosley truly did it with Mayweather. We obviously saw Mosley do that earlier this year with Pacquiao, but it wasn't the same performance from Shane.

I'm not trying to discredit Floyd. My argument here is that rather than sending opponents into "survival mode," Mayweather simply dominates them so thoroughly that they run out of ideas and can't figure out anything to do. Floyd has a way of sapping his opponents' will to fight. And sure that's part of survival mode, but I think there are subtle differences that speak to Mayweather's ability to demoralize opponents more than just send them into a state of mind and state of fighting where they're just trying to go the distance.

But Floyd does indeed have a history of stopping guys who came and fought their hearts out against him without taking backwards steps. Ricky Hatton, Arturo Gatti, Diego Corrales -- these were tough men, and they came to fight and impose their will on Floyd. They all failed gloriously and were stopped. If Ortiz comes to fight as he says he will, that's the risk Victor runs. But it's also worth noting that Victor Ortiz is bigger than those guys, and punches harder, and is a southpaw.