LAS VEGAS — There is a place for conventional wisdom in boxing, as it turns out, but you need to follow Floyd Mayweather to find it.

Nearly everyone in boxing thought Mayweather would have a relatively sweatless evening against Juan Manuel Marquez at the MGM Grand on Saturday night, and that’s what happened. Mayweather lost three rounds, total, on three judges’ cards. But then everyone had thought Oscar De La Hoya would strong arm Manny Pacquiao, and Antonio Margarito would do the same to Shane Mosley, and Kelly Pavlik would loosen Bernard Hopkins’ dentures, and Miguel Cotto would go technical on Margarito. Every time, the opposite happened, which admirably shuffled the boxing deck, but Mayweather is a strict proponent of chalk.
He is also 40-0, and his 21 months of exile didn’t hurt him artistically or economically.
Mayweather-Marquez drew a near-sellout 13,116, and Mayweather will make upwards of $10 million, depending on the pay-per-view buys. The fact that he got fined $300,000 per pound, for weighing in at 146 instead of 144, barely makes a dent.
The only real contention came after the fight, when Shane Mosley came over during Mayweather’s post-fight interview to say he wanted some. Mayweather seemed a little frosted by that, and there was a lot of hold-me-back stuff that shouldn’t be taken seriously.
“I don’t see why not,” said Oscar De La Hoya, who will have something to do with it. “Mosley has a good case. It will be an All-American showdown.”
But Mosley looked far too good in dismantling Margarito last February for Mayweather to bother with him, and thus endanger a possible bonanza against the winner of Pacquiao’s fight with Cotto in November.
Mayweather does know how to schedule. The choice of Marquez seemed appropriate at the time and looked like sheer genius with each monotonous round. Marquez brought a name. He’s the guy who had a draw and a split decision loss to Pacquiao. But he came in at 144 pounds, nine more than he’d ever carried into a ring, and in about two minutes of watching this, you realized why they have weight classes in the first place.
“The weight was a problem,” Marquez said. “I think by the time of the fight he might have weighed 20 more pounds than me.”
The Pretty Boy devoted the first few rounds to convincing Marquez that any offense would be futile.
Mayweather stood just outside Marquez’s range, leaned back whenever the Mexican advanced, and then popped him with a jab at will. In the second round Mayweather’s quick left hook knocked down Marquez, inconsequentially, but at no time could Marquez establish his pattern of body pressure that wears out lesser men.
Marquez began to open it up in the fourth round and found himself hitting arms, elbows and air.
Mayweather carefully replied with combinations, most of them too quick for Marquez to see, and kept his own ribs covered and his head moving.
Another familiar thing happened. The loud, hopeful pockets of hope for Marquez, in various sections, were quickly engulfed by the general appreciation for just how immaculately good Mayweather is.
Mayweather generally treated Marquez respectfully, except for a smarty-pants dance following some extra flurries after the 10th bell, and later called him a “great little man, a great fighter.”
But Mayweather reverted to his Money May persona in the prelude to the fight, somehow ignoring his
IRS problems, and Las Vegas police have investigated his Rolls-Royce after a shooting near an ice rink last spring. Guns and ammunition were also recovered from his house.
It was also reported that the IRS has placed a lien against Mayweather for $6.17 million in unpaid taxes in 2007.
Money tends to obscure such problems, but Hopkins, working as a promoter for Oscar De La Hoya’s Golden Boy productions, wasn’t happy with Mayweather’s reference to himself as a “silverback gorilla” during HBO’s Mayweather-Marquez 24/7 series.
“You think that’s culture?” Hopkins said Saturday morning. “The silverback gorilla is dominant. He’s powerful and he’s a ruler. That’s not good TV. I would never use that. I know what white people will use that for.
“I’m just saying he doesn’t know. He’s blinded by the luxuries of what make you a man. Bill Gates wears khaki pants and a regular shirt and he waits for the next billion-dollar deal to come on. I’m glad I’m not like Floyd. I’m not the guy who buys the $400,000 car that loses $100,000 once I drive it off the lot.”
But that’s how Mayweather reduces everything and everyone. You have a problem with him outside the ring? He can understand. A lot of Mayweathers find turbulence there. When Floyd steps through the ropes he goes into a world of his own making, cold and logical. He upsets people, not the other way around.