So begins our marathon coverage of one of the biggest fights of 2013, Floyd Mayweather vs. Robert Guerrero on Showtime pay-per-view May 4. Now: putting Mayweather-Guerrero in context. Next: the undercard, previewed.

Some of the basics of the Floyd Mayweather story leading into his battle Saturday against Robert Guerrero are unchanged: He's still the consensus best fighter in the world, his opponent is a considerable underdog and he's still the premier pay-per-view attraction in the sport. It's the world around Mayweather that has shifted dramatically.

Manny Pacquiao, Mayweather's rival for so many years for best/biggest, is no longer a rival for either title, having lost two in a row, the second a savage knockout by Juan Manuel Marquez of the variety that can end careers. Mayweather has switched trainers from uncle Roger to father Floyd, Sr. And Mayweather has departed the company of HBO, the undisputed industry giant, for the company of Showtime, which is now challenging HBO's supremacy with the move that could be the richest for any athlete ever by the time the deal concludes.

It is understandable, then, that much of the focus on Mayweather-Guerrero has been on how the bout has been promoted by Showtime and parent company CBS; whether Mayweather has reached a saturation point and how much he interests people as he now stands inexorably separated from the name "Pacquiao;" and on what's next for him after Guerrero.

We'll examine the merits of Mayweather-Guerrero here some, but reserve some of that for later coverage. For right now, we'll mainly try to place Mayweather-Guerrero in the proper overall context.

(Apr 27, 2013; Brooklyn, N.Y -- Danny Garcia [green trunks] and Zab Judah [black trunks] hug after their junior welterweight bout at the Barclays Center. Credit: Joe Camporeale-USA TODAY Sports)

It takes a weekend of boxing like the last one to overshadow a weekend like the one up next, headlined by the world's biggest pay-per-view attraction and consensus best fighter, Floyd Mayweather. Everywhere you looked, there were closely-fought, dramatic, action-filled bouts featuring top fighters getting seriously challenged, foremost among them (in no particular order) Sergio Martinez-Martin Murray; Danny Garcia-Zab Judah; Amir Khan-Julio Diaz; and Bermane Stiverne-Chris Arreola.

It's too bad, then, that approximately half of the viewing audience couldn't watch both of the competing HBO and Showtime cards. With so many people having DVRs in their homes, it's easy to assume that everyone does. They don't -- as of the last survey in November, only about half of all U.S. homes do. Maybe the people with HBO and Showtime subscriptions are skewed a little higher than the average, but DVRs are expensive to own in an economy like this one, and not everyone can afford them. So determined are HBO and Showtime -- and, often in conjunction, Top Rank and Golden Boy -- to wage full-on war (as Scott Christ recently wrote, it's no longer a Cold War) against each other that they don't care how many fans they snag so long as they hurt the other guy. In the short-term, the competition can boost both sides' products. In the long-term, they're still dividing a very sizable contingent of the boxing audience in a way that is hard to imagine not doing damage.

That's just about the only down note you can strike when reviewing the weekend that was, though. Sure, you could castigate a couple young heavyweights feasting on the carcasses of old heavyweights, and we'll mention one of them below, not so much the other. But if you like boxing, you almost surely found an awful lot to enjoy about what you witnessed.

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Our friends over at Yardbarker sent us the video above where they did an interview with Robert Guerrero in advance of his welterweight showdown Saturday with Floyd Mayweather on Showtime pay-per-view. Check it out. We'll begin our own comprehensive coverage here ASAP -- I'm just returning from a weekend out of town -- but this will get you started off nicely. It also gives you a handy hashtag (#BEATFLOYD) to use on Twitter if you're either A. rooting for Guerrero; B. rooting against Mayweather; C. playing Pink Floyd's softball team this weekend; or D. all of the above.

(Post sponsored by Yardbarker.)

(Danny Garcia, left, connects with a right hand; photo credit: Joe Camporeale, USA Today)

Over 12 rounds, what many expected to be a foregone conclusion got interesting down the stretch – with junior welterweight Danny Garcia taking an unexpectedly close-ish and hard fought decision over Zab Judah at the $1 billion Barclays Center in Brooklyn, New York on Showtime Saturday night. 

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Martin Murray came close to ruining middleweight champion Sergio Martinez’s homecoming party in Buenos Aires on Saturday, but fell just short. In front of more than 40,000 singing, screaming Argentine fans, Murray put forward a workmanlike effort on HBO against a champion who seemed to be at a little less than his best.

(Angel Garcia, yelling about something, as his son Danny looks on)

Remember the days when you used to wish that you’d one day grow up to be as big and tough as your dad? Remember trying to practice after he taught you how to throw a punch, only to get bored after a couple of minutes and forget about it? Well the sons of these guys don’t. They stand as a tribute to the value of instilling discipline -- or the complete lack thereof -- and an indomitable will to win deep inside your children. This is a tribute to boxing’s rich paternal tapestry through a look at the best, worst, and just straight-up weirdest father figures in the sport.

Four of these fathers, in fact, are "in action" over the next two weekends.

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The middleweight champion of the world is back. It is both a glad and potentially dangerous occasion, the return Saturday of Sergio Martinez not only to the ring, not only to HBO, but to his native Argentina, where he's become an athlete worthy of presidential hobnobbing. Martinez is resuming his reign coming off the richest win of his career, a resounding decision win over popular Mexican brawler, Julio Cesar Chavez, Jr., and will be celebrated by approximately 40-50,000 Argentines live in Buenos Aires. But the Chavez win was a win that, while it enriched him, came with a cost: a badly injured knee resulting from the final round charge from Chavez, one that required surgery. Reconstructed knees are not kind to 38-year-old late starters who depend upon a special brand of speed and gymnastics, the way Martinez does.

Enter Martin Murray, a top-10 middleweight with similarities to two fellow U.K. 160-pounders who have given Martinez more trouble than some expected, Darren Barker and Matthew Macklin. Murray, whose best performance came in a draw against top middleweight Felix Sturm in a bout that many believed he deserved to win, is fundamentally sound, intelligent, nothing special but with no discernible exploitable flaws like Barker and Macklin. Both of those men kept things close, but ultimately succumbed to the superior speed and power of Martinez. Neither of them faced Martinez coming off knee surgery.