By Dan Ambrose: 37-year-old former WBA super middleweight champion Anthony Mundine (43-4, 25 KO’s) figures that he’s the one that can give unbeaten WBA junior middleweight champion Floyd Mayweather Jr. his first loss if he’d only show some interest in fighting the former 168 pound champion.
Mundine told Foxsports.com.au “I’m the only one that can beat Floyd. You need speed. He’s never fought someone as fast as me or someone as good skill as me…I’ve got a five-fight plan [to get to Mayweather bout], whether it takes two years or two-and-a-half or three years.”
I hope Mundine isn’t counting on Mayweather actually fighting him, because it’s not going to happen whether Mundine hangs around for another three years hoping to get a fight against Mayweather. Mundine’s whole problem is that he’s spent the vast majority of his career fighting obscure opposition in his native Australia, and because of all that time he’s spent over there facing nobodies, it’s prevented him from building any kind of fan base in the United States.
Mundine is fighting next month on July 14th in Las Vegas against journeyman Bronco McKart, but that will be Mundine’s first fight in the U.S. It’ll take years for Mundine to build up a big enough fan base for Mayweather to bother fighting him, and by then Mayweather will be too old and Mundine also too old for the fight to happen. I don’t expect that Mayweather will still be around in another two to three years judging by how he looked in his recent win over Miguel Cotto.
Mayweather is slowing down, and you can’t expect him to waste one of his few remaining fights on a huge super middleweight sized fighter like Mundine, who has no fan base. It would be waste of a fight for Mayweather because it wouldn’t draw flies.
Mundine needs to work his way into a fight against WBC 154 pound champion Saul Alvarez or WBA champ Austin Trout. Both of those guys are young and they could use an old lion like Mundine to pick up a win over a semi-recognizable fighter among the hardcore boxing fans.
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