In what has to be seen as bad news for Manny Pacquiao and his promoter Bob Arum, superstar Floyd Mayweather Jr. is showing no interest in coming out of retirement to continue his boxing career. Mayweather (49-0, 26 KOs), says he’s an “old man” now and he wants to treat his body good by using his head.
The 39-year-old Mayweather hasn’t fought since beating Andre Berto by a 12 round decision last September.
It’ll be exactly one year since Mayweather fought next month. While he’s been out of the ring for extended periods of time in the past, Mayweather is older now and he’s got a lot of money in the bank from his huge paydays against Pacquiao, Berto and Saul Canelo Alvarez in the past.
It’s very likely that the only way the boxing world sees Mayweather stage a comeback is if he spends all the money he’s made during his career on over-purchasing different things that he can’t resell for the same value.
“I’m an old man,” said Mayweather to foxsports. “I’m treating my body good, being smart. I was still able to compete at the top level for 20 years. I’ve done a lot of boxing. I just want to give back to young champions right here.”
Mayweather could always change his mind and make a comeback in 2017, but it’s not likely. He’s been cold to the idea of fighting Pacquiao a second time ever since beating him last year in a boring 12 round decision. That fight brought in 4.6 million pay-per-view buys in smashing the existing PPV record of 2.4 million buys that had been set by Mayweather and Oscar De La Hoya back in 2007.
Mayweather made over $250 million from the Pacquiao fight. With that kind of money, it’s going to take Mayweather a long time to spend it down if he’s not making new money to replace it with his investments. It’s quite likely that by the time Mayweather does return to the ring, he’ll be too old and forgotten to bring in the big money that he’d been accustomed to getting in the later stages in his pro career.
Recently, Mayweather showed interest of wanting to fight UFC star Connor McGregor in a PPV fight that would take place under boxing rules. However, with McGregor talking about wanting a 50-50 cut of the revenue, the fight seems to have died down. Mayweather has said that he wants to get a nine-figure payday ($100 million) for his comeback fight. That’s not going to be possible with McGregor getting half of the revenue for his fight.
If Mayweather comes back, he’ll likely be limited to Pacquiao and Saul Canelo Alvarez as his possible opponents if he wants to get $100 million. Those are the only fighters that could help Mayweather bring in a lot of PPV buys.
Mayweather isn’t interested in facing Gennady GGG Golovkin. It probably doesn’t matter how much a fight between Mayweather and Golovkin would generate, it’s not something that Mayweather would likely agree to. A fight between Mayweather and Danny Garcia would be seen by the boxing world as Mayweather cherry picking a flawed/paper champion at 147 instead of fighting the best. The fight would still make money, but likely no more than Mayweather’s mismatch against Andre Berto. To get the big money, Mayweather would need to take some risks in facing Canelo again or Pacquiao.
Canelo is said to have put on weight in the last two years, and it might be too much for Mayweather to deal with if the Mexican fighter rehydrates to 185 against him. Mayweather beat Canelo in 2013, but it was Canelo rehydrating to the upper 160s. Canelo is older now, heavier, and very good and dehydrating to make weights that are well below his rehydrated weight.
Pacquiao and his promoters at Top Rank are going to need to make a decision which direction they want to go in next year if Mayweather doesn’t give the Filipino star a rematch. If that fight can’t happen, then Arum might need to persuade Pacquiao to fight Terence Crawford. That might be the only option Pacquiao has to get a huge payday unless Arum wants to work with other promoters to match him against bigger names than Crawford like Keith Thurman. It probably won’t happen though. Pacquiao might be stuck with just one choice of fighting Crawford.
