The 6 Best Floyd Mayweather Fights, As Ranked by the Experts

As you know, Floyd Mayweather will finally by facing off against Manny Pacquaio on May 2nd (tickets) at the MGM Grand Arena (seating chart). To celebrate the fight, we thought we would put together a list of Mayweather’s greatest fights from his storied career (Pacquiao’s coming soon). Now, this list has been made many times, and here at TickPick, we like to do things a little differently (i.e. that whole not charging fees on our tickets thing), so we didn’t want to just give you our opinion like every other list out there. Instead, we chose to create, as close as can possibly be achieved, an objective list of Mayweather’s greatest fights.

How did we do this?

We took a page out of Nate Silver’s playbook. Nate Silver is a data-guru extraordinaire, and runs the blog FiveThirtyEight, where he talks about all things (you guessed it) data. He came to fame during the 2012 elections, when he predicted the winners across all major elections – president, congress, state governors, etc. – more accurately than anyone else. More accurately than Forbes, more accurately than The New York Times, and more accurately than all those election forecasters CNN, Fox News, and the like hired.

You see, every poll has a margin of error, which is the estimated range by which the poll could be of by. To overcome this and create a more accurate prediction, Nate Silver averaged every major poll on the elections, thereby cancelling each poll’s individual margin of error.

To create our mega-list of Floyd Mayweather Jr’s greatest fights, we did something very similar. We “polled” the experts by looking at all the articles we could find on the topic, and gave each of Mayweather’s fights a ranking based on how many times and in what position it appeared in all the lists we compiled. Therefore, we can say with greater confidence than has ever been done before that the greatest fights of Mayweather’s greatest fights are . . .

1.) Genaro Hernandez

Mayweather-Hernandez earns the top spot on this list, because Mayweather’s cocky personality the best. It was his first challenge for a world title, the WBC super featherweight, and Mayweather being Mayweather, he wore a WBC patch on his shorts, as if to tell Hernandez, “I already have your title”.

At first, it looked like Mayweather may have spoken too soon with the whole badge-on-the-shorts thing as the young contender slipped to the floor in the first round. Nevertheless, after gaining his feet, Mayweather took Hernandez eight rounds before Hernandez’s corner threw in the towel. After he was announced the victor, Mayweater sank to the floor of the ring, and cried.

It seems like Mayweather never forgot that fight, for years later, he quietly decided to pay for Hernandez’s funeral after the older boxer passed away.

2.) Jose Luis Castillo

Castillo will go down in history as the one who maybe beat Mayweather, and just never got it recorded. With a split decision scoring, there are legions of fans who believe that Castillo was the real winner of the fight, and that the judges went with Castillo because it was better for boxing’s brand. Quite simply, fans claim that Mayweather was declared the winner because he was an American, spoke English, and there was a lot of money riding on him becoming the superstar people were beginning to suspect he could be. What do you think? Do you agree? Let us know what you think in the comments.

3.) Diego Corrales

Mayweather solidified his position as an undefeated fighter when he beat the hitherto-undefeated super featherweight contender, Diego Corrales. Before he met Mayweather, Corrales’s back had never touched the floor of the ring. Mayweather put him down 5 times.

4.) Arturo Gatti

Mayweather absolutely dominated Gatti through six rounds of lightning-fast combinations before Gatti’s corner threw in the towel. It was Mayweather at his best, and Gatti was simply overwhelmed by Mayweather’s proficiency.

5.) Ricky Hatton

Even Mayweather recognizes that Hatton may have been the toughest fighter he ever fought. Hatton had the edge on him during the first rounds, able to get a few good hits in, but like always, Mayweather slowly wore down his opponent, with Hatton’s corner throwing in the towel at the same the referee called it for Mayweather.

6.) Oscar de la Hoya

Even though he’s ranked 6th, no list of Mayweather’s greatest fights would be complete without mentioning Oscar de la Hoya.Floyd Mayweather Sr. reportedly said that his son shouldn’t have been awarded the split decision vote. What do you think? Did Mayweather win the fight? Let us know what you think in the comments.

---

Manny Pacquiao

Where will Pacquiao fall on the list of Mayweather’s greatest fights? If you want to be there in person when it all goes down, you can find cheap Mayweather-Pacquiao tickets here on TickPick!