Floyd Mayweather Jr in my opinion is the best boxer we have seen in the 21st century. Known now as ‘Money Mayweather’, there was much much more to his game than simply generating hundreds of millions of dollars fighting the biggest names in combat sports including Manny Pacquaio and Conor McGregor, after all to make that money he would have needed skills that made him the best in the sport.

One of the key reasons Floyd Mayweather Jr was so good though wasn’t just his boxing skills, it was his boxing brain – Floyd was one of the boxers I named in my article Boxers with the highest ring IQ. Mayweather was an extremely smart fighter inside the ring, I wouldn’t argue with you if you claimed he was the smartest fighter we have ever seen step foot inside the squared circle.

Floyd Mayweather Jr was sometimes called a slow starter, the reason being he was busy trying to work you out, pick up on your patterns and then execute the plan he had thought up on the move whilst fighting you. There was no puzzle Floyd was unable to solve and the video below shows just how quickly Floyd could work you out.

Juan Manual Marquez was Floyd’s opponent in this fight, Marquez is an all time great fighter from Mexico, known for his counter punching and combination puncher. Although it is true he was coming up in weight classes to take on Floyd Mayweather Jr, we can still see how fast Mayweather processes information because he was coming back after almost two years out from the sport.

Floyd Mayweather Jr comes out against Marquez throwing two punches, the lead left hook and the jab to the body. Mayweather continues this tactic, peppering Marquez with shots of each of these and towards the end of the round one, Marquez begins to drop the hand to defend the jab to the body, using the parry as his defence.

Floyd notices Marquez is now favouring the parry to defend against the body jab and in round two gets him comfortable by throwing a few more body jabs, just to make sure Marquez is still using the parry. Then Floyd feints the jab to body, drawing a parry from Marquez. At the last moment Floyd changes the shot to a lead left hook to the head, Marquez has already dropped his hand to protect against what he thought was the body jab but it is too late, Mayweather lands with the lead hook and down goes Juan Manual Marquez. Simply masterful stuff from Floyd Mayweather Jr.

Have a look at the video below to see Floyd putting this into action.