By Chris Williams: With the way that Manny Pacquiao conducted himself after his loss last Saturday night in the “Fight of the Century” in Las Vegas, Nevada, Floyd Mayweather Jr. says he no longer respects the Filipino fighter and doesn’t think it’s worth giving him a rematch.
Mayweather doesn’t buy Pacquiao’s injury excuse for a second. As far as Mayweather is concerned, he fought a healthy Pacquiao last Saturday night and beat him convincingly.
Mayweather says he didn’t notice any weakness or loss of speed in Pacquiao’s right hand from a preexisting shoulder injury to his right shoulder. Mayweather just sees Pacquiao as coming up with excuses in order to try and explain away a loss.
“I’m not going to buy into the bull—… and I don’t want the public to buy into the bull—-. He lost. He knows he lost,” Mayweather said to Showtime’s Jim Gray. “I lost a lot of respect for him after all of this.”
There it is folks. Mayweather says he’s lost respect for the 36-year-old Pacquiao and doesn’t want to honor him with a rematch. The complaining and excuse-making for Pacquiao is going to keep him from getting another $100 million+ payday against Mayweather.
Without a rematch against Mayweather, Pacquiao will have to be content fighting someone like Kell Brook, who the casual boxing fans in the U.S. have probably never even heard of. My guess is Pacquiao might be able to bring in 350K PPV buys against Brook at best. Those really, really low compared to the numbers that Pacquiao enjoyed during his heyday years ago.
“Absolutely not,” Mayweather said to Gray about whether he could tell if Pacquiao was injured. “He was fast. His left hand was fast. His right hand was fast and he was throwing them both fast and strong. Excuses, excuses, excuses.”
I didn’t see any signs of Pacquiao favoring one of his arms. He was throwing shots with both hands, and he did that for the entire 12 rounds. If Pacquiao did aggravate his injury earlier in the fight like with what his promoter Bob Arum has said, it didn’t keep Pacquiao from using his injured hand.
The fighters that I’ve seen who have suffered rotator cuff injuries were forced to fight one-handed. I didn’t see that with Pacquiao. He kept throwing shots with both arms for the entire 12 round fight, and was throwing with considerable power with his right hand.
Mayweather losing respect for Pacquiao is one thing, but what is going to really hurt Pacquiao is Mayweather not giving him a rematch. It might be in Pacquiao’s interest to start groveling with Mayweather and showing some respect. Pacquiao might need to think seriously about pouring on the compliments right about now if he wants that second payday against Mayweather.
That’s about the only thing I can see that would be good about the second fight for Pacquiao. Other than a payday, Pacquiao has nothing else to gain from fighting Mayweather a second time in my view, because I don’t think he can ever hope to beat him. Mayweather is too talented and Pacquiao’s fighting style is too primitive, and he’s too short.
Comments are closed.