Big weekend coming up. Floyd Mayweather Jr. puts the lightweight championship of the world on the line against the man he won it from, the too long underrated Jose Luis Castillo.

I am in the minority who think that Mayweather deserved the decision in their first fight. I thought Floyd won enough of the early rounds to eke it out. Still, the fight was very close and the decision could have gone either way. This time around Mayweather has no excuses. Should he lose, he will have done so to an opponent for whom he was totally prepared.

It is unfortunate that Mayweather has brittle hands, because it makes him a less effective fighter. If a boxer is especially prone to injury to the point where it diminishes his ability to compete, it counts against where we rate him. The pain Mayweather experiences in his hands might be an explanation for a sub-par performance, but it is no excuse.

Castillo might not even need the help of Mayweather's "hand"icap. In their first fight it appeared to many that Jose Luis simply outfought "Pretty Boy" Floyd. And why not? Castillo twice got by Stevie Johnston. Stevie does not have Mayweather's talent, but he is peerless when it comes to boxing skills.

In two fights against Stevie and one against Floyd, Jose Luis has gone even up: one win, one loss and one draw. (I wrote about Mayweather-Castillo last week in an article about the Arturo Gatti-Micky Ward rematch; it's archived if you are interested.)

But wait -- there's even more this weekend than a top-shelf lightweight title fight rematch.

Wladimir Klitschko is finally going to pick on someone his own size -- and someone who can fight and is in his prime to boot. That someone is Jameel "Big Time" McCline, who will himself finally be tested against a fundamentally sound fighter. Klitschko will match McCline's height, if not weight, and is going to show up in shape.

McCline has fought fighters as big as Klitschko in fights he was supposed to lose (or come close to losing.) Jameel was brought in as an "opponent" for Michael Grant. True, Grant was coming off a second-round knockout loss, but that loss was to Lennox Lewis, the heavyweight champion of the world. Big Time took Grant out in the first round -- half the time it took Lewis.

Mount (or Goofi, or Lance or whatever he was calling himself at the time) Whitaker was another super heavyweight who was supposed to give McCline all he could handle -- at least. He didn't. Jameel dominated the entire fight.

Just like he dominated Shannon Briggs in the little room at Madison Square Garden in his next fight. Now, say what you will about Briggs -- he has indeed lost to mediocre fighters, and is often unimpressive -- but the guy is 6-5 and weighed 260 against McCline, and has fast hands and very good power. Briggs is just the kind of guy matchmakers with hot young heavyweight prospects avoid.

Shannon got into McCline's head in the days leading up to their fight and in the early rounds Jameel was perhaps overly respectful of Shannon's power. But Jameel survived a few shaky moments and wound up winning the fight going away. Invaluable experience going into this fight with Klitschko, a former Olympic gold medalist at super heavyweight.

Wladimir had a great amateur career and is a far more fundamentally sound fighter than McCline. However, Big Time is actually the more experienced pro in terms of facing good, big opposition.

The reason this showdown has not garnered more press is probably because most observers correctly favor Klitschko to win, in the same way they felt Marco Antonio Barrera would beat Johnny Tapia, and Erik Morales would beat Paulie Ayala. A drama-dampening consensus forms in the boxing world before certain fights that an upset is possible, but it is unlikely to actually occur. In other words, the underdogs were not as live as some of us would like to have believed.

McCline is a live underdog -- though he is likely not as live as I would like him to be.

Max Kellerman is a studio analyst for ESPN2's Friday Night Fights and the host of the new show Around The Horn.