Who will be named fighter of the decade for the 2010s?

Floyd Mayweather

Record in decade: 10-0, 2 KO’s

The obvious nominee, the best fighter of his era, and one of the best pure boxers of all time, there is not a sports fan on earth who does not know Floyd Mayweather.

It is only fitting that the fighter with the nickname “Money” has made nearly $1 billion in his career. He was box office, and made most of his money during the period of his career when many fans called his style boring.

Earlier on, Mayweather was not the defensive fighter many fans watched in the 2010’s. He was offensive, and looked to stop his opponents. However, the tail end of his career saw him change his style into a defensive fighter, and one of the best ever at that. It was nearly impossible to land clean on him, and if you did, you probably were not landing clean again.

In the 2010’s he was able to defeat Shane Mosley, Miguel Cotto, Canelo Alvarez and Manny Pacquiao. Those are four future Hall-of-Famers, one of which (Pacquiao) is an all-time great. Sure, we can argue about who would have won if they fought in 2009, but they didn’t, and when they did fight, Mayweather won.

You can also make the argument that Alvarez was not ready for Mayweather, but fans still wanted to see it. There was a reason the fight did two million pay-per-view buys; people really thought Alvarez could be the one to dethrone Mayweather.

Those four wins alone are enough to create a strong argument for why Mayweather should be the top boxer of the 2010s. Not only did he beat those four Hall-of-Fame-caliber fighters, he did so convincingly. The closest of those fights was the Cotto fight, and even that, there is not anyone who thinks Cotto did enough to win.

The rest of his wins include Conor McGregor, Andre Berto, Marcos Maidana twice, Robert Guerrero and Victor Ortiz.

He was the No. 1 fighter pound-for-pound the entire time he was active this decade, and he has four wins that are about as good as you can get. Sure, the rest of his fights this decade left some to be desired, but his big wins, his skill and his dominance are all reasons why Mayweather is one of the favorites to win fighter of the decade.