By Dan Ambrose: WBA/WBC welterweight champion Floyd Mayweather Jr (47-0, 26 KOs) is in a situation where he’s pretty much run out of top fighters for him to face for him to keep his pay-per-view numbers up. If he wants a big fight for his next bout in May of 2015, he’s in a situation where he’ll need to face WBO welterweight champion Manny Pacquiao.
That means that Mayweather will need to somehow work with Pacquiao’s promoter Bob Arum of Top Rank for that fight to happen. With Pacquiao having recently signed a 2-year extension with Top Rank that takes him until the end of 2016, Mayweather has no other choice but to work with Arum.
Mayweather either works with Arum or he’ll never get a chance to fight Pacquiao, because he can’t simply wait Pacquiao out until his contract with Arum is over. Mayweather, 37, is too old to wait out Pacquiao’s current contract with aging promoter, and it’s very likely Pacquiao will dutifully re-sign with Arum once again when his contract with him has expired at the end of 2016.
Other than Pacquiao, there aren’t any big names for Mayweather to fight in the welterweight division. If he chooses to fight Amir Khan, Keith Thurman or Kell Brook in his next fight in May of 2015, none of those fights will result in big pay-per-view numbers.
Khan would have been an interesting opponent for Mayweather to fight in 2011 before Khan was beaten by Lamont Peterson. But now that Khan has been beaten by Danny Garcia as well, he’s no longer an interesting option for Mayweather. If Mayweather were to fight Khan now, he’d be competing with Garcia and Peterson to try and do a better job of beating him. Brook vs. Mayweather wouldn’t sell in the U.S, and we’re probably talking about smaller PPV numbers than Mayweather’s fight against Robert Guerrero in 2013.
“I’m going to go back and talk to my team and see what we can asset and my next opponent,” Mayweather said. “If the Manny Pacquiao fight presents itself, let’s make it happen. Manny Pacquiao needs to focus on the task in front of him (fighting Chris Algieri on Nov. 22). After he gets past that guy we’ll see what the future holds.”
Unless Mayweather is content with taking on a welterweight with a lesser name, his only options are to try and fight Pacquiao or one of the guys he’s already beaten before like Saul “Canelo” Alvarez or Miguel Cotto. At this point, Mayweather will likely need to wait until the Cotto-Canelo fight takes place before he gets a crack at one of those guys, because the two of them look like they’re going to take it easy in terms of opposition until they face each other. But once the Canelo-Cotto fight takes place in 2015, then Mayweather will be able to try and get one of them to face him. But in the meantime, he’s going to need to get the biggest name possible, be it Pacquiao or Khan.
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