Monday, September 16, 2013

Floyd Mayweather Jr: The Greatest Boxer Ever?

This past weekend, Mayweather united the Light Middleweight belts for a second time by beating Canelo Alvarez handily.  Thats right, the 36 year old Mayweather easily beat the undefeated 23 year old Alvarez.  This fight just reinforces what I have thought for the past 5 years: Mayweather is not only the greatest pound for pound boxer in the world, but the greatest ever.

Here are some of the highlights from Mayweather's illustrious career that deserve noting:
  • He has held title belts in 5 different weight classes, and has even swapped back and forth between Light Middleweight and Welterweight twice.
  • Has never lost a fight
  • Won the Ring Fighter of the Year award in '98 and '07, tied for the largest time gap with Ali and Sugar Ray Robinson
  • Won the BBWA fighter of the year award in '07 at the ripe age of 30
  • Has never lost a fight
  • Is the highest grossing athlete of the past 5 years (not counting endorsements)
  • Beat the likes of Miguel Cotto, Victor Ortiz, Ricky Hatton, Shane Mosley, Oscar De La Hoya, Jose Luis Castillo, Diego Corrales, and Juan Manuel Marquez...These are some of the biggest names in boxing in the last 10-15 years
  • And oh yeah, he has never lost a fight, despite fighting all those names above
All of these stats put Mayweather above all competition in the world today, and put him at the very least next to Muhammad Ali as the greatest ever.  Ali's stats through age 36: 56-3 with 37 KOs. Mayweather: 45-0 with 26 KOs.  We will see what happens in the coming years but at this point I believe Mayweather is on the list of Greatest Boxers Ever.  Now lets just hope that Pacquiao finally decides to let himself be drug tested so that Mayweather and him can fight.

Friday, September 6, 2013

Football is back: Thoughts from last night and Fantasy football

So after a week long hiatus, I am back to the blog and along with me comes the opening night of the NFL season.  Last night was brutal.  If you watched the game, you saw what happens when a team lets half of its starting lineup from the previous year go.  The Ravens defense could not stop Peyton and his plethora of weapons.  And with Ray Rice only running the ball 12 times, Flacco had to throw 62 times.  Normally, one of the highest paid QBs in the league throwing 62 times isn't a bad thing.  Unless that highly paid QB is Joe Flacco.

Flacco got a huge contract last year making him the 3rd highest paid QB in the league.  He got this because of a very good stretch of playoff games that led Baltimore to the Super Bowl.  You know who else had great stretches that got his team to the Super Bowl? Shitty QBs like Jake Delhomme (he lost) and Brad Johnson (he won), and pretty good QBs in Eli Manning (won twice) and Donovan McNabb (lost).  All of these QBs have one thing in common, they have mediocre-to-good years and then got hot during the playoffs and made it to the Super Bowl (and won it in some cases).  Flacco fits somewhere amongst those QBs and not as the 3rd highest paid QB.  He proved that last night.

On the Broncos side, they proved one big thing.  That offense is full of weapons.  The two Thomas's, Moreno, Ball, and Welker all looked above average to great at times last night.  Not to mention 7 TDs from Peyton.  Yeah, you read that right 7 fucking touchdowns.  When Welker came over from NE, many people (not me) said that he was not going to be the same and that Thomas and Decker would take away his targets.  Well after averaging about 10.5 targets a game for the Patriots, he had 11 targets last night for 9 catches, 67 yards, and 2 touchdowns.  The person who seems to be the odd man out is Decker who only had 2 catches all game.

Earlier this week, I had my two fantasy football drafts as well.  I wanted to share my teams and hopefully get some feedback on them.  My first team is an Auction draft where we use 6 IDP (Individual defensive players) and had 250 dollars to spend.  Here it is (with dollars spent in parentheses):
QBs-Aaron Rodgers (58), Terrelle Pryor (1)
RBs-Darren Sproles (20), Danny Woodhead (3), Kendall Hunter (1), Mikel Leshoure (1), Marcel Reese (1)
WRs-Calvin Johnson (59), Dez Bryant (44), Greg Jennings (3), Kenny Britt (1), Reuben Randle (1), Andre Roberts (1)
TE-Jimmy Graham (46)
K-Stephen Gostkowski (1)
IDP-Eric Berry (4), Tyvon Branch (1), Dannell Elerbe (1), Jerrell Freeman (1), Chandler Jones (1), Muhammad Wilkerson (1)

My other team was a Snake draft that was a PPR (point per reception) league and I had the 8th pick.  Here it is (with the round picked in parentheses):
QBs-Matthew Stafford (6), Michael Vick (12)
RBs-Jamaal Charles (1), Maurice Jones-Drew (2), Demarco Murray (4), Ben Tate (8), Jacquizz Rodgers (11)
WRs-Randall Cobb (3), Hakeem Nicks (5), T.Y. Hilton (7), Justin Blackmon (9), Kenny Britt (10), Denarius Moore (13)
TE-Brandon Myers (14)
K-Justin Tucker (15)
DEF-Miami (16)

Now I am just looking forward to Sunday so that I can watch football all day and hopefully win in both my fantasy leagues.