In the first article of this series, we looked at Floyd Money Mayweather’s history and how he got into boxing. This article continues to look at the rise of Floyd Money Mayweather as he moved to the lightweight and light welterweight divisions.

The Lightweight Fighting Machine

Following his move to lightweight division, Floyd Money Mayweather immediately went for the top dog in the division. Mayweather challenged Jose Luis Castillo for the WBC Lightweight Championship belt, and after a 12 round fight at the MGM Grand Garden Arena, the Money would be victorious again also winning the vacant, The Rank lightweight titles.

The bout was a close affair between the two boxers, and as a result a rematch got organised. Mayweather would again overcome Castillo with a unanimous points victory, using his footwork and combinations to score 115 on two scores cards and 116 on the third. As a lightweight the Money would go on to reach a record of 30 wins and 0 defeats, he also managed to defend his WBC Lightweight Championship against guys like Victorjano Sosa and Philip Ndou, the South African.

During his domination of Ndou, Floyd would land blow after blow with Ndou refusing to stay down. In the fifth round, Mayweather smiled ruefully at Ndou’s determination to stay up before finally knocking Ndou out in the seventh round.

The next challenge

In 2004, Mayweather decided that it was time to move up by one more division, as he challenged the former Light Welterweight champion, DaMarcus Corley. In the fight, Mayweather knocked Corley down in the eighth and tenth round scoring 119 points on three scoreboards. The victory would earn the Money a match against the WBC Light-Welterweight champion, Arturo Gatti.

Before the match Mayweather used taunts where he called Gatti names like, “a C+ Fighter”, “a fake” and “a blown-up club fighter”. Nevertheless during the bout Gatti proved why he was the champion, but he was still no match for the Money as Floyd would land big blows against Gatti. Eventually Gatti’s corner had to stop the match in the sixth round and Floyd would retract his pre-bout comments saying that “it was only to sell tickets”.

Conclusion

The victory over Arturo Gatti would be his last in the Light-welterweight division as this rising star and fighter would decide to on to better and greater things. When he left the Light-welterweight division, Floyd Money Mayweather was still rated the top boxer by the American boxing magazine, The Rank.