Marino measures Mayweather’s boxing career in Wall Street Journal
St. Olaf College Professor of Philosophy Gordon Marino has authored a piece for the Wall Street Journal considering where current World Boxing Council welterweight champion Floyd Mayweather Jr. would place on a list of the greatest boxers of all time.
In anticipation of a title unification bout between Mayweather and World Boxing Association welterweight champion Marcos Maidana — which Mayweather went on to win — Marino asked whether or not defeating Maidana would be enough to earn Mayweather a spot on the list of all-time greats.
“All-time greatness in the gloved game is usually achieved by some combination of longevity and career-defining matchups like Ali vs. Frazier,” Marino writes in the piece.
“Mayweather has always been adamant that he is on a short boxing tether and won’t be campaigning into his mid-40s. So in lieu of the longevity factor, who will be the 37-year-old Mayweather’s Duran or Hearns?”
Unfortunately for Mayweather, Marino speculated that the boxer may be running out of potential rivals whose defeat would carry “that career-defining stamp.”
He notes that “In what some call the ‘Cold War’ in boxing, it is nearly impossible to arrange marquee showdowns between Top Rank boxers such as Pacquiao and Timothy Bradley and Golden Boy-related fighters like Mayweather. It is as if there were two different leagues in boxing — without a World Series.”
Marino is a nationally recognized sports journalist who regularly contributes to publications like the Wall Street Journal, Boston Globe, and New York Times. In addition to his teaching and writing, Marino also serves as curator of the Howard and Edna Hong Kierkegaard Library and co-coaches the St. Olaf Boxing Club with Associate Professor of English Carlos Gallego.