Zab Judah just recently joined Andre Ward’s podcast and in this segment he speaks about his perspective on his 2006 fight against Floyd Mayweather that notably went haywire down the stretch of the fight. Even to this day Judah believes he was hard done by in that fight, believing he at worst deserved a draw. Here’s some of what he had to say on the topic.
“People say the first five rounds, Zab won,” Judah said. “If you add the knockdown, that’s six rounds. It’s only 12 rounds in a fight so if I win
six and he wins six, fight’s a draw…If two men are fighting in the ring and somebody jumps in the ring at any time, it’s an automatic DQ. So those are the real situations that happened in the fight that should’ve changed…But if that would’ve happened or we go back and change that, then that changes the whole trajectory of Floyd Mayweather’s TBE career, because now he’s not 50-0 no more.
“Floyd Mayweather had all of his fights in Las Vegas. Today when we see things like that happen it’s called a what? It’s called a residency. So he had a modern day boxing residency in Nevada saying he’s not going to lose. Because this is a residency, this has got to go on two times a year, one at the top of the year, one at the end of the year, every year. ‘You stay on your feet, you good, we got you, you’re going to win’. So Floyd had a residency, six rounds I won, the knockdown, the uncle and them getting into the ring — that should’ve been a disqualification.
“So there’s so many different factors why that fight should’ve went the other way. But the smartest thing that I think that Bob Arum and Floyd Mayweather team did was I got suspended right after the fight. Somehow they said I was the causer of the brawl, I was the initiator of the brawl, and they got me out the way for a whole year.
“They was able to go up the ladder so that when it was time for me to come back after my one year, you already know they was like ‘nah, nah, nah, we doing this, we doing that.’ So that’s why you never seen a Zab Judah vs Floyd Mayweather Pt. 2.”
Judah was then asked about the low blow and the shot behind the head he struck Floyd with in the 10th round that kicked off a melee with Roger Mayweather, but Judah insists neither was deliberate.
“I didn’t try to do that,” Judah responded. “It was the 10th round, we was both fatigued…I threw a shot and followed up…I did not do that intentionally. It was the heat of the moment…They broke it up and he started doing his antics and walks off and Richard Steele was looking — he didn’t even know what to call, he didn’t even know what happened!”
Ultimately, Judah says Mayweather escaped with an official win on his record and had absolutely no intention of running it back with him after the trouble he presented.
“Regardless of whatever, they didn’t want no rematch. They didn’t want that to happen because Zab was getting in that ass.”
