By Dan Ambrose: Floyd Mayweather Jr. said over the weekend that he’ll be vacating his world titles on Monday. While some fans aren’t too clear on why Mayweather would want to vacate his titles, perhaps one reason is due to the huge money he’ll be saving in terms of the sanctioning fees for each of the belt.
Mayweather, like a lot of world champions, has to pay sanctioning fees for his belts. At this point it really doesn’t matter if Mayweather has world titles or not because he’s already established himself and the titles aren’t needed to validate him as the top fighter in the sport.
Indeed, you can make an argument that Mayweather hasn’t needed titles for many years because he’s been seen as the No.1 guy for ages now.
“It’s about giving other guys opportunities,” Mayweather Promotions CEO Leonard Ellerbe said via the washingtonpost.com about Mayweather vacating his belts. “He’s accomplished everything in the sport. What more can he accomplish?”
Paying for the sanctioning fees has got to be a headache for stars like Mayweather. He’s making so much money with his fights, but he doesn’t seem to get the value out of holding onto the titles because they’re not needed. One of the major problems in the sport of boxing today is the numerous world titles that are up for grabs for each division.
You’ve got potentially five world titles available for each division. This means there can be five welterweight champions. The sport is so watered down that it’s taken away the value of a fighter being a champion. About the only thing that’s good about being a world champion is that television networks are more interested in showing the fight, even though they don’t necessarily get value depending on which of the world champions they’re televising.
As for who Mayweather will be fighting next, it’s not going to be Manny Pacquiao. That fight is done as far as Mayweather’s trainer Floyd Sr. is concerned. “It ain’t necessary to do it again because the same thing will happen again,” Floyd Sr. told the nydailynews.com.
It’s quite possible that Amir Khan could be the next opponent for Mayweather. That might not make a lot of boxing fans happy though because many of them see Khan as someone who has had a soft ride ever since he was beaten by Lamont Peterson and Danny Garcia in 2011 and 2012. What could ultimately derail Khan’s chances if him having Ramadan in September, and not being available to take the fight. Since Mayweather probably isn’t going to move off that date just to fight Khan, it means that Khan will either need to face Mayweather in September or he’ll lose out on his chance.
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