By Chris Williams: Floyd Mayweather Jr. has made it clear to Showtime executive vice president of sport Stephen Espinoza that his next fight in September will be the last one of his 19-year pro career.
Mayweather plans on retiring after he finishes that fight. Espinoza respects Mayweather’s decision to hang up his gloves, although he says he’s open to assisting him in putting together a rematch against the injured Filipino fighter Manny Pacquiao if that’s a direction that Mayweather chooses to go in next year.
As far as Mayweather’s next fight in September, Espinoza will be in talks with him about his opponent.
Mayweather will almost surely be picking out one of the talented welterweights in the division such as Kell Brook. Keith Thurman took himself out of the running for the Mayweather fight by choosing to fight Luis Collazo on July 11th.
Amir Khan is a possibility if he gets past his opponent Chris Algieri next Friday night in Brooklyn, New York. Khan will need to beat Algieri, look good, and avoid suffering any bad cuts that would need an extensive amount of time to heal up.
“Yes, Floyd has continued to tell us that he intends to fight September 12, and that it will be the last fight of his career,” Espinoza said top Multichannel.com. “So we are beginning the very preliminary preparations for exactly that. We will be getting into discussions about an opponent for him very quickly.”
Mayweather is going to take a considerable pay cut for his September fight from the big money he received in the Pacquiao fight on May 2nd of this month. There simply isn’t anyone popular enough to bring the big money that Mayweather got for fighting Pacquiao. Miguel Cotto and Saul “Canelo” Alvarez would bring Mayweather a nice lump of cash if he were to fight one of them, but they seem to be heading for a fight against each other in September or October.
IBO/WBA middleweight champion Gennady Golovkin would be the next best option for Mayweather to fight in September. Golovkin has already said that he’d come down to 154 for the fight. But Golovkin might be fighting Carl Froch next, and that would get in the way of Mayweather fighting him next. But if Golovkin were free and was good about melting down to 154, it might be an interesting fight for Mayweather to take.
In speaking about a Mayweather-Pacquiao rematch, Espinosa said “I think we have to remain open to it. There’s a lot of chatter on both sides about the possibility – once Manny successfully recovers from [shoulder] surgery.”
A rematch between Mayweather and Pacquiao will be driven not just by what the boxing fans want, but also by whether Mayweather wants to give him a rematch. Right now, Mayweather is negative about giving Pacquiao a rematch due to the excuses he made after his loss to Mayweather on May 2nd. Pacquiao surprised people by saying that he fought with a bad shoulder that night. Pacquiao also said he still beat Mayweather 7 rounds to 5. Not too many boxing fans agreed with this opinion, but that’s how Pacquiao feels. He’s kind of isolated with this belief.
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