Three thoughts on Floyd Mayweather beating Robert Guerrero

It was an easy 12-round win for Floyd Mayweather over Robert Guerrero in Las Vegas. (Rick Bowmer/AP)

LAS VEGAS -- Three thoughts on Floyd Mayweather’s easy win over Robert Guerrero:

A blowout I thought, a blowout I got: Guerrero talked tough before the fight, promising to rough up Mayweather, promising to do to him what no fighter had before. But how many times have we heard that before? When Guerrero did get in the ring, he found himself up against a quicker, stronger, more elusive fighter. The first two rounds were close, but after that it was repetitive. Mayweather pot-shotted Guerrero with right hands, so many in fact that he said he broke it in the middle rounds. Guerrero chased Mayweather around the ring throughout the fight, trying to pin him against the ropes, trying to do to Mayweather what he did to Andre Berto last year.

GALLERY: Action shots of Mayweather-Guerrero

But Mayweather (surprise!) is not Berto. For the most part, Mayweather kept the fight in the middle of the ring, going to the ropes, it seemed, only when he wanted to. When Guerrero did get inside, Mayweather parried most of his punches and kept a stiff guard up to prevent anything significant from getting through. According to CompuBox, Mayweather connected on 41 percent of his punches (to Guerrero’s 19 percent), 19 percent of his jabs (compared to 11 percent for Guerrero) and a whopping 60 percent of his power shots (28 percent for Guerrero). It was a boxing clinic by a fighter taking on an opponent nowhere near his level.

No rust: Mayweather isn’t the same springboarding defensive fighter he once was, the end result of age costing him some of his mobility. But coming off a one-year layoff and a two-month prison sentence, he was more elusive than he was in his last fight, against Miguel Cotto. Time after time Guerrero went for a big hook and came up with air. Time after time Guerrero tried to crowd Mayweather, only to have him disappear right in front of him. Going into the fight, I thought the only way Guerrero could win would be if Mayweather aged in the ring. Put simply, he didn’t.

Where now, Floyd? There is going to be a groundswell of support for Mayweather -- who confirmed before the fight he would be back in September and that he intended to fight five more times -- to face Canelo Alvarez in the fall, and Alvarez, who has replaced a defanged Manny Pacquiao as Mayweather’s preferred opponent, is a solid choice. But is there any real reason to believe that an inexperienced Alvarez will be able to locate Mayweather any better than Guerrero? Mayweather’s potential pool of opponents -- Alvarez, Danny Garcia, Amir Khan -- just aren’t on Mayweather’s level. It’s Floyd’s world, as long as he can keep his skills on top of it.

-- Chris Mannix