By Dan Ambrose: After the disappointing performance we saw from Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Manny Pacquiao last Saturday night, ESPN analyst Teddy Atlas has no interest in seeing a second fight between the two fighters. He feels that nobody wants to see Mayweather fight Pacquiao again after what took place last Saturday. Atlas thinks both guys disappointed the paying the fans with how they fought.
Instead of seeing a rematch between Mayweather and Pacquiao, Atlas says he’d like to see Mayweather fight WBA middleweight champion Gennady Golovkin.
Atlas thinks that would be an interesting fight that he’d be willing to purchase a ticket to go see it. Like many people, Atlas doesn’t want to see Mayweather fight Amir Khan next.
“Nobody wants to see this fight again,” said Atlas via slive.com.”There’s no reason for it, it’ll hurt the business. And I don’t want to see Khan. He doesn’t excite me.”
A second fight between Mayweather and Pacquiao may or may not be bad for business, but it’ll still give Mayweather a bigger paycheck than he’d receiver against any other fighter in the sport. Despite the fans being disappointed in the outcome of the fight last Saturday between them, a rematch would obviously sellout the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, and a lot of boxing fans would still purchase the fight on PPV. I don’t know if it would be smart for Mayweather and Pacquiao to try selling the fight for $100 again on PPV. I think that would be potentially very bad given their performances, but a lot of fans would buy it if Mayweather-Pacquiao dropped the PPV price to $60.
They’d have to know whether the two of them are having some kind of lingering injury that will affect their performance before they enter the ring. It wouldn’t be any good if Pacquiao comes into the fight with shoulder injury and looks for an anti-inflammatory shot before the fight. It also wouldn’t be good if Pacquiao started talking about the injury after the fight rather than giving credit for Mayweather doing a good job. If you’re injured, why take the fight? If a fighter is willing to fight with an injury, then they shouldn’t talk about the injury afterwards because it comes across like they’re looking to discredit their opponent for having beaten them.
Atlas has a lot of respect for guys like former world champ Sugar Ray Leonard for him facing dangerous opponents during his career, and for moving up in weight to the middleweight division to take on knockout artist Marvin Hagler. Atlas thinks that Leonard’s legacy will go on because of the risks he took during his career. That’s why Atlas would like to see Mayweather take the same kind of risks by taking on Golovkin rather than taking his career backwards to fight Pacquiao again.
“If Floyd cares about such things, he’ll fight Golovkin — but I don’t think he cares. Golovkin is a seek-and-destroy guy. He’s aggressive and physical and knows what he’s doing. Now that fight I would buy a ticket for.”
It would be a great fight if Mayweather were to face Golovkin because he’s the type of fighter that wouldn’t likely have an injury excuse if he were to lose the fight to Mayweather. Golovkin would make it interesting the entire time. It’s doubtful that Golovkin would back off from Mayweather after eating some hard jabs and right hands in the early rounds like we saw with Pacquiao. Golovkin would just coming forward. Win or lose, Mayweather would win a lot of respect for a fight against Golovkin because he would show that he has the courage to take on the guy.
With Golovkin rehydrating up to the mid-170s like Saul “Canelo” Alvarez does for his fights, Mayweather wouldn’t be facing the biggest guy of his career. If he could get Golovkin to drain down to 154 to face him, it would be a doable fight. Golovkin already said that he’d be willing to drop down from 160 to 154 to face Mayweather. This likely means that Golovkin would rehydrate only to 165 to 170. It wouldn’t be a huge weight advantage for Golovkin.
Comments are closed.