Floyd Mayweather Sr. is back in his son’s corner for Saturday night’s epic match-up between Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Canelo Alvarez, but back in 2007 Floyd Sr. said his legendary son should not have been awarded the split decision win in his fight with Oscar De La Hoya.
“If you go by point system, you gonna have to give it to Oscar,” Floyd Sr. said in a post fight interview with HBO’s Larry Merchant in 2007.
At the time of junior’s fight with De La Hoya, he was shunning his father, who he only brought back as his trainer this year. Floyd Sr. has also trained De La Hoya, though he was not in De La Hoya’s corner when his son fought him.
Floyd Jr. likes to boast that many have tried but none have succeeded in beating him during his 17-year professional career, but if the judges ruled the way his father thought they should have in 2007, his perfect record wouldn’t exist — and he perhaps would not be the highest paid athlete in the world today.
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Now, back in his son’s corner and good graces, the elder Mayweather is humming a different tune.
“I trained De La Hoya for seven years myself, De La Hoya doesn’t know shit about what to tell … anybody,” he told SB Nation when asked whether he is worried that De La Hoya gave Alvarez the blueprint on how to beat his son. “How you gonna tell somebody something when you got your own butt whooped?”
When the interviewer pointed out that the fight was a split decision, the senior Mayweather pushed back.
“They said it was a split decision. I was there. A lot of people disagreed with that,” he said.
For the record, this writer recently re-watched the 2007 De La Hoya/Mayweather Jr. bout and scored the fight for Mayweather: 115-112.