Mayweather came out attacking and scored an easy victory with a unanimous decision over Andre Berto in a welterweight world title bout at the MGM Grand Garden Arena, improving his record to 49-0. Despite all the skepticism about whether he is ready to start the next chapter in his life, Mayweather continued to insist that this was indeed his final fight.
“My career’s over,” he said during the postfight ring interview. “It’s official.”
He continued: “You got to know when to hang it up. I’m knocking at the door now. I’m close to 40 years old. There’s nothing else to prove in the sport of boxing.”
The final margins on the scorecards were 117-111, 118-110 and 120-108 as Berto’s record dropped to 30-4.
From the opening bell, Mayweather seemed intent on making sure this fight was different from his previous bout, against Manny Pacquiao, a defensive fight that was widely criticized as boring. Mayweather was fast with his jab in the opening round against Berto and looped several left hooks past Berto’s gloves.
Berto methodically plodded forward and threw sweeping right hands at Mayweather, connecting on few of them. In typical fashion, Mayweather allowed Berto to corner him on several occasions, and the crowd roared each time it appeared that the challenger had landed a punch.
Although Mayweather loosened up as the fight went on, lowering his hands and flopping around like a rag doll as he danced around the ring, much of the work was done at close range. He delivered several punishing right hooks to Berto’s rib cage while they clinched. When Berto tried to get in close and raised his right glove to hammer down a thundering blow, Mayweather craftily tucked his head at Berto’s side to keep out of harm’s way.
In the eighth round, with Mayweather’s back against the ropes and Berto standing in close, Mayweather jutted out his neck a couple of times, resting his chin on Berto’s left shoulder, sizing up his next move. Then, in a flash, Mayweather sprang back and delivered quick right and left hooks that sent sweat splashing from Berto’s head. Mayweather then spun to the other side of Berto, and when Berto turned to find him, Mayweather greeted him with another left hook.
By the 11th round, Mayweather appeared completely at ease. At one point, with his back against the corner post, he ducked beneath a sweeping punch from Berto and then looked back toward the ropes, mocking the miss. With his arms dangling by his sides, Mayweather tapped his feet back and forth, moving his legs like scissors, and urged the crowd on.
The playful antics came amid a fight in which the opponents showed plenty of hostility. At the end of several rounds, the referee had to get between them and push them back toward their corners. In the 10th round, the referee actually called a timeout and admonished the two men to stop talking trash.
Mayweather, 38, entered the bout insisting that it would be the last fight of his career, although many people inside and outside his camp were unconvinced. The victory gave Mayweather the same record as legendary heavyweight Rocky Marciano, and some analysts found it hard to believe that Mayweather, who has said he is the best fighter in history, would not try to surpass that mark.
Mayweather could also have a heavy financial incentive to keep fighting. This was the final bout in the six-fight contract he signed with Showtime in 2013, meaning that he is essentially a free agent and that he could peddle another fight for a huge payday.
Mayweather has said that his priority is preserving his health.
“Well, no one is in my shoes,” he said in the days before the fight. “My health is more important.”
And he is not struggling for money. Mayweather was set to make at least $32 million Saturday. In his fight against Pacquiao in May, the most lucrative in history, Mayweather made more than $200 million.
But even for all the success Mayweather has had in the ring, winning world titles in five weight classes, questions have swirled around his legacy, with assertions that he has sometimes avoided top competition. Despite an impressive record, Berto, 32, was not seen as a difficult opponent, having gone 3-3 in his previous six fights.
Yet Mayweather had said he was taking Berto seriously.
“He feels like he has nothing to lose,” Mayweather said before the fight, “and I think that when you got a guy that’s put in that situation, it makes him work that much harder because he got a chance to be one of the top guys in the sport when I’m through.”
Mayweather entered the ring as controversy focused on him outside it. The website SB Nation had reported a few days before the fight that Mayweather took an intravenous vitamin injection the day before he fought Pacquiao. The article raised questions of whether the fluids would have been a masking agent for performance-enhancing drugs and whether the injection broke Nevada State Athletic Commission rules.
But before Saturday night’s fight, Bob Bennett, the chairman of the commission, said that Mayweather had not taken any banned substances.
-(c) 2015 New York Times News Service
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