Floyd Mayweather Jr, is a boxer who met a cloven-hoofed stranger at a crossroads and signed away his basic human decency. In return, he got the genius which lets him see punches seconds into the future, and mastery over a lagomorphic fecundity of technical skills, including but not limited to parries, counter rights, shoulder rolls, check hooks, clinch-and-walks, 'inadvertent' elbows, and of course, the ferocious left-hook-and-cross counter out of the attempted hug which he displayed to such great effect against Victor Ortiz. Mayweather hasn't just got it figured out inside the ring. He's also developed a suite of other techniques for the rest of his career as well, such as the face-heel turn, the duck, the baseless accusation, and most shamefully, the domestic violence settlement.

In a bout which could best be described as 'mathematically pre-ordained', Mayweather coasted to a unanimous decision over 20-1 underdog Andre Berto. After Mayweather's UD victory over Pacquiao in what was sold for $100 a pop as 'The Fight Of the Century,' Jack Slack over at Vice wrote beautifully about the skill Mayweather exhibited with the clinch, suggesting that part of the reason he was so successful in tying up Maidana (and, to a lesser extent, Pacquiao) is that contemporary referees separate fighters immediately rather than allowing them to 'fight it out'. Yesterday, longtime Mayweather referee Kenny Bayless appears to have taken a fair amount of Slack's advice, appearing more reluctant to separate the fighters during the inevitable clinch. Interestingly, this allowed Mayweather to not only use the clinch as a way of immediate defense from Berto's increasingly frustrated onslaught but as a source of offense as well. A fantastic example of this happens in round six, when both fighters are tied up in the middle of the ring. Mayweather, leaning on Berto with his feet way back, uses his left forearm to push away Berto's head. Since Berto's hands are on the outside of Mayweather's, and since Mayweather's body is so far back from Berto due to both the leaning and the height advantage, his head is protected and Berto can't go to his body. Since Berto's off balance, he can't really sit down into his punches even if he was in the position to throw them with any real bad intentions. When the right distance is opened, Mayweather leans to his side and throws a right uppercut that he, after withdrawing his left hand, allows Berto to fall into as he swings it. That's the mastery.

Something which this fight made me realize is that Mayweather does some of his best work when he's on the ropes. One of the things which people write about is the way in which Mayweather seems to always be running as though he were afraid of being cornered, as his most recent opponent chases him down, consuming a smorgasbord of counterpunches and verbal invective. When you watch this fight, try to see how what he does when he's backed up. He sets his feet forward and leans back, a bad-guy luchador setting up a clothesline off of the ropes. If the punch is ranged right, it comes in, he rolls under it, shoves his head into Berto's armpit, and is safe. If it's low, he comes through with a free uppercut and leans down on the shorter Berto, making him carry his weight until Bayless reluctantly breaks them up. And if it's short? Berto gets a counter right over the top, and then he gets grabbed. But the scary thing isn't really that he escapes the corner when Berto came in. It's that Andre Berto is a tenacious, strong boxer, and every time he did manage to corner Mayweather he came in a different way, first behind the jab, then with the check hook when that didn't work, then a lead right. It's that Andre Berto showed, in this exact, frequently repeated situation, a pretty astonishing amount of inventiveness given the situation he was in, and even though he was smart about it, it still did not work. Roughly 75% of the time, Mayweather escaped basically unscathed.

Another thing that bears revisiting is the profundity of Mayweather's psychological effects on his opponents, the way that he plays on their patterns and turns their strengths, in a kind of Nixonian jujitsu, into his own. He goes to the body with that famous left of his to get his opponent to lower their guard. When their guard is low, he throws the famous counter-right over their jab. He makes the other guy spend the entire round cornering him, and when he's cornered you think he's dead but, as the Pixies would say, he just sails away on a wave of mutilation. This toll that he takes on boxers plays out in different ways. Berto and Ortiz got angrier and angrier (although Berto's fuse was much longer than Ortiz's). Pacquiao and Mosely seemed to just give up. His counterpunching wears on fighters too. Shane Mosely, especially, is an evocative case. Mosely is a volume puncher known for his business in the ring. When he fought Winky Wright the second time, Shane Mosely threw 618 punches. He threw 745 when he fought Canelo. Against Mayweather? 452. When what you do ends not only in failure, but punishment, you just do less of it.

I have no idea what makes Floyd Mayweather, Jr. tick, and I'm probably glad that I don't. He had a pretty bad upbringing in Grand Rapids. His father was a drug dealer who only spent time with him when he was boxing. He dropped out of high school to pursue it, and he hasn't done anything else sense. His amateur record was 84-6, most famously losing a gold medal at the Olympics to what was effectively mathematical error; his judges failed to impose a point deduction on his opponent once the referee had called for it. I really don't like Mayweather, and I'd like to act as though he jumped up out of a hole in the ground and just began harming his loved ones, manipulating USADA rules, and using this oppressive style in the ring. I'd like to think that all of that stuff stemmed from the same, fundamental evil, that he was boxing's Sauron, and that one day, some young contender who was pure of heart would reforge his great-grandfather's pair of Cleto Reyes and defeat him in the ring in such a way that would make everything awful that he's done outside of it go away or not matter.

That's not going to happen now, and it wasn't ever going to happen. But how about this as far as Floyd goes. You're a young Olympic contender who hasn't known anything but fighting and you've just lost the gold for no reason. You haven't got anything for career prospects. You didn't finish high school, your family is dirt poor, and your dad is in jail. When he was out, you had to beg him to get him to spend time with you. You had to beg for food, probably. You had to write a letter begging Bill Clinton to pardon him so he could watch you fight. When you look in that mirror after, again, you've just lost the gold medal, something you've been working on for literally your whole life. You are sixteen. Do you find something else to do? Or do you resolve to never, ever lose again? I don't know what actually happened to Mayweather, what ate his heart and what makes him do what he does, and I don't want to.

His record is now 49-0, tied with the world record for longest undefeated streak. If you think he's actually going to retire after this fight, I'd like to take this opportunity and ask you to stop thinking that.

Photo Credit: Shea Huening (via Flickr)