Floyd Mayweather to fight Japanese kickboxer/MMA phenom Tenshin Nasukawa

New Years Eve in Japan.

Tenshin Nasukawa's resume
27-0, 20 KOs in pro kickboxing
4-0, 2 KOs, 1 submission in MMA
4 world kickboxing championships in 2 weight classes
Black belt in 2 disciplines of Karate

Unlike McGregor, who was physically much larger than Floyd, Nasukawa is smaller. He generally fights at 126 pounds, while Floyd usually fights at 147. No weight class has been announced.

The big question that hasn't been answered yet is what the rules will be.

Mayweather posted a photo of himself wearing Rizin MMA gloves, but it's hard to believe he'd put himself in a fight where he could be taken to the ground. In an MMA fight Floyd would have to knock him out before he gets grabbed, because any decent submission artist would pull one of Floyd's arms off.

We all know how a boxing match would go. Floyd would win easily, and knock his opponent out at his leisure like with McGregor.

So a kickboxing match makes the most sense. It's the only type of fight that could be competitive. Boxing is 100% Floyd, MMA is 85% going to end with a quick tap out loss for Floyd, 15% a quick KO win, but either way that shit isn't going 2 rounds.

If they go kickboxing, hopefully Floyd has spent the last year learning to avoid leg kicks. I don't think anybody is landing major head or body kicks to Floyd due to his speed and reflexes, but it's nearly impossible for a boxer to avoid leg kicks and keep his offensive stance.

So we'll have to see what they do here. Boxing, MMA, kickboxing, or some weird hybrid rules.

Sideshow Floyd.

SteveNK said:

Sideshow Floyd.

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24-0-0-0 against world champion boxers
26-0-0-0 in world title fights
5 weight class world champion (super feather, light, super light, welter, super welter)
4 weight class lineal champion

He has nothing left to prove. He beat everyone there was to beat in his era. So if he wants to take gongshow fights for ridiculous sums of money at 42, more power to him.

Plus if he gets caught and loses one of these gongshows it'll be fuckin' hilarious.

Boxing Scene is saying that "the talk is" that this will be a straight up boxing match, and it's a last ditch effort to use Floyd's name to stop Rizin's financial bleeding. What Floyd gets out of it is promoting his name there for an eventual rematch with Paquiao at Tokyo Dome.

It will also not be a major PPV, and could be as few as three rounds. If that's the case it wouldn't even technically count as a pro fight on either of their records.

So this just became way, way less interesting.

Rizin is a garbage promotion even by JP MMA sideshow standards, but if this keeps the media from talking up the inane possibility of Floyd fighting MMA against Khabib I'm all for it.

jro said:

Rizin is a garbage promotion even by JP MMA sideshow standards, but if this keeps the media from talking up the inane possibility of Floyd fighting MMA against Khabib I'm all for it.

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No way Floyd's crazy enough to fight Khabib in MMA. Khabib is probably the best grappler in the world and he's quite a bit bigger. Boxing, sure. But if Floyd gets into MMA he's not fighting a grappling specialist.

jro said:

Rizin is a garbage promotion even by JP MMA sideshow standards, but if this keeps the media from talking up the inane possibility of Floyd fighting MMA against Khabib I'm all for it.

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How dare you say such things about Rizin!

I wanna see Floyd fight a bear.

Fight's off.

Sounds like Floyd agreed to put on a private exhibition and they blindsided him with the press conference. They wanted to use Floyd's name to save their failing brand but lied to him about it.

Stupid move. Floyd doesn't need their money.

RIZIN needs to die as soon as possible. ONE FC is actually doing a solid job with Asian MMA, and those clowns are just trading on lies and nostalgia.

He probably watched Tenshin's highlights and realized I might get knocked out by a 20 year old.
The idea of a bout with Nasukawa being a private exhibition is ridiculous. Been a fun couple of days though. Tenshin got his name out to a bunch of casual fans.

One Fc has shit rules. Rizin is the last promotion left that is as close to Vale Tudo/street fight as possible. Plus its lineage comes all the way back from New Japan Pro Wrestling. So these guys know how to promote, just kind of hard when the Japanese public doesn't give two fucks about Kakutougi anymore.

No way this kid knocks Floyd out. It was going to be a boxing match, and Floyd has 20 pounds on the kid.

Shane Mosley hit Floyd flush and couldn't get the KO. If he couldn't, ain't no way a featherweight kickboxer can. And that's assuming he'd even be able to hit Floyd... which he probably wouldn't.

Well it did take Floyd 10 rounds to beat an amateur. But to be fair that fight could have been a work so who knows. 20 pounds don't mean nothing when you got K.O. power.
My guess is they wanted Kick rules which Floyd wouldn't have made it past round one, so he said fuck this i'm out.
It was a lose lose situation for Mayweather, if it was boxing rules only, if he beats the kid big deal, but if he somehow didn't beat him and fast he would also look bad.

All of this is meaningless anyway, they would have to fight to see who would win.

Lee_Rekka said:

Well it did take Floyd 10 rounds to beat an amateur. But to be fair that fight could have been a work so who knows. 20 pounds don't mean nothing when you got K.O. power.
My guess is they wanted Kick rules which Floyd wouldn't have made it past round one, so he said fuck this i'm out.
It was a lose lose situation for Mayweather, if it was boxing rules only, if he beats the kid big deal, but if he somehow didn't beat him and fast he would also look bad.

All of this is meaningless anyway, they would have to fight to see who would win.

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Floyd could have gotten McGregor out of there at any point, don't kid yourself. There were moments in the fight where Floyd naturally raised his hands for a punch at an open chin, then visibly restrained himself.



Look here. Floyd slips a jab, hits a clean straight right, blocks an uppercut with his right hand. Look at his left. Against a real boxer in a real fight, Floyd fires that left hook.

Or this one:
https://fat.gfycat.com/PleasingSereneGalapagosalbatross.webm

Floyd has many clear shots at the chin of a fighter who presents no danger to him. Doesn't fire the shots because he doesn't want to.

Also Floyd tried to bet on himself to win in the 9th round, but couldn't get the bet down in Vegas. I suspect someone in his entourage got the bet down for the 10th.

And 20 pounds is a massive difference. That's the difference between a featherweight and a welterweight, or a welterweight and a super middleweight. Weight classes exist for a reason and that's a 3 class jump.

There is no scenario where this kid beats Floyd in a boxing match. Kickboxing and MMA are his domain. If he were good enough to beat a fighter like Floyd in boxing, he'd be a boxer. He'd be making 50X as much money as he does right now.

Legend of Success Floyd.

Famicommander said:

If he were good enough to beat a fighter like Floyd in boxing, he'd be a boxer. He'd be making 50X as much money as he does right now.

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Fact.

There is no worlds greatest tennis player currently shunning the game in favour of badminton.

Yeah, like I said, the match was a work.

watching fighting for as long as I have, 20 pounds don't mean shit if you got heavy hands especially in stand up only rules.
Kid Yamamoto vs Masato for example(actually kids whole career) was a 30 pound weight diff and and Kid dropped one of the best Middleweight kickboxers of all time when he wast even a kickboxer. So yeah Tenshin could surely drop Floyd with his hands.

Boxers don't make anything special unless you are the top guy like Floyd, Pacquiao, De la hoya and so on. Tenshin just turned 20 so he has time if just wants to focus on boxing, but maybe he doesn't. I know myself when I fought amateur kickboxing, while I love boxing, If I would of pursued a combat career I would have had no desire to become just a boxer no matter the money.

Tenshin said he didn't care what the rules were, so it should be no problem for Floyd to beat him in a boxing match, yet he still runs.
Everyone looks good in this scenario except Floyd. But as they say there is no such thing as bad publicity, I guess he got what he wanted.

Lee_Rekka said:

watching fighting for as long as I have

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You don't get to pull grandpa seniority, we're all old here bud.

SteveNK said:

You don't get to pull grandpa seniority, we're all old here bud.

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Never claimed to be, just been involved in combat sports since I was born. My Grandpa was an amateur boxer and so was my dad, so my whole life I eat sleep and breathed fighting.

Lee_Rekka said:

Never claimed to be, just been involved in combat sports since I was born. My Grandpa was an amateur boxer and so was my dad, so my whole life I eat sleep and breathed fighting.

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My dad was a project manager but I gave up the diet, too tightly planned.

Lee_Rekka said:

Yeah, like I said, the match was a work.

watching fighting for as long as I have, 20 pounds don't mean shit if you got heavy hands especially in stand up only rules.
Kid Yamamoto vs Masato for example(actually kids whole career) was a 30 pound weight diff and and Kid dropped one of the best Middleweight kickboxers of all time when he wast even a kickboxer. So yeah Tenshin could surely drop Floyd with his hands.

Boxers don't make anything special unless you are the top guy like Floyd, Pacquiao, De la hoya and so on. Tenshin just turned 20 so he has time if just wants to focus on boxing, but maybe he doesn't. I know myself when I fought amateur kickboxing, while I love boxing, If I would of pursued a combat career I would have had no desire to become just a boxer no matter the money.

Tenshin said he didn't care what the rules were, so it should be no problem for Floyd to beat him in a boxing match, yet he still runs.
Everyone looks good in this scenario except Floyd. But as they say there is no such thing as bad publicity, I guess he got what he wanted.

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The top stars in kickboxing don't make six figures a fight.

The biggest purse in MMA history is 3 million dollars.

Guys fighting on the undercards of basic cable boxing cards make a hundred grand easily. Guys who main event cable cards like Lomachenko or Wilder clear over 2 million per fight easily. Canelo just signed up for 365 million dollars over 11 fights. Floyd has cashed multiple 100 million plus dollar checks for individual fights.

You can claim rank all you want but you don't know shit about boxing if you think a 126 pound kickboxer is dropping a 147 pound all timer in a boxing match.

Famicommander said:

The top stars in kickboxing don't make six figures a fight.

The biggest purse in MMA history is 3 million dollars.

Guys fighting on the undercards of basic cable boxing cards make a hundred grand easily. Guys who main event cable cards like Lomachenko or Wilder clear over 2 million per fight easily. Canelo just signed up for 365 million dollars over 11 fights. Floyd has cashed multiple 100 million plus dollar checks for individual fights.

You can claim rank all you want but you don't know shit about boxing if you think a 126 pound kickboxer is dropping a 147 pound all timer in a boxing match.

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You forget - his dad was an amateur boxer, he knows this shit.

My dad was an amateur chef. Lets talk michelin star dining bitch.

Jumpingmanjim said:

I wanna see Floyd fight a bear.

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Straight up boxing or MMA?

When K-1 was in its heyday the winner got $400,000 or $500,000 plus paid for every fight of the tournament. When Masato was king, they built the whole K-1 Max promotion around him and i'm sure he was getting well over a million a fight the draw he was. But top boxers make way more then any other fighters, at least for the time being.

As for MMA I only know payouts from the U.S. When Japan was booming they never released to the public the payouts, but fighters always said they payed well.

Canelo is a top guy, of course he is getting that kind of money. But your average boxer don't make nothing special.

Of course a young phenom in Tenshin could beat a 41 year old well past his prime Mayweather, all odds are overwhelmingly with Mayweather, but a fight is a fight, and anything can happen, that's why we watch.