By Chris Williams: WBA/WBC/WBO welterweight champion Floyd Mayweather Jr. (48-0, 26 KOs) has reportedly not complied with the World Boxing Organization’s conditions for him to keep his newly won WBO 147lb title, according to Dan Rafael. As a result, Mayweather will probably be losing his WBO title this Monday.
The WBO gave Mayweather a deadline of July 3rd, at 4:30 p.m. ET to vacate his WBA/WBC junior middleweight titles, and give the WBO a sanctioning fee for the title. If/when the WBO strip Mayweather of his WBO title, they’ll then be giving the full title to interim WBO welterweight champion Tim Bradley.
This in turn will make him a more interesting opponent for Manny Pacquiao to fight in a third fight. Don’t be surprised at all if Top Rank promoter Bob Arum makes that fight in 2016, because once Bradley has the WBO title in his possession, it will make it an easier fight for Arum to make in putting Pacquiao back in with Bradley for a third time.
“According to @WorldBoxingOrg Floyd has not complied with the rules by today’s 4:30 pm ET deadline. Likely to be stripped of 147 on Monday,” Rafaael said on his Twitter.
Mayweather doesn’t need the WBO title, because it’s just a trinket and that has too many things involved with in order for him to keep it. They want Mayweather to jump through hoop after hoop in order hold onto the strap. I could understand Mayweather wanting to keep the title if he were in his 20s and nobody knew who he was, but he’s established fighter now and he’s bigger than the simple titles that he’s holding onto.
You can make an argument that Mayweather could have fought without titles for the past 10 years of his career and still be just as popular as he is now. I’m sure Mayweather would love to have all that money back that he’s thrown away during his career in paying the expensive sanctioning fees for the straps he’s held onto.
The casual boxing fans don’t seem to care about titles anyway. They just want to see good fighters and they want to see that zero in a fighters’ won-loss record. They also want to see a lot of knockouts. The belts are really secondary nowadays given that there are so many sanctioning bodies now and so many world titles. They’ve watered down the sport to the point where even mediocre fighters are holding world titles.
You can’t blame Mayweather for not meeting all of the WBO’s demands for him to keep their title. Giving them the money for the sanctioning fee and giving up his two junior middleweight titles. Why would Mayweather want to give up all to the WBO just in order to keep their title? It wouldn’t make sense.
Mayweather is already offering to give up one of his other welterweight titles for Errol Spence Jr. (17-0, 14 KOs) to fight for on his undercard on September 12th against either Shawn Porter or Keith Thurman. Mayweather has no takers for his offer, although Spence definitely wants to fight for it if Thurman, Amir Khan or Shawn Porter are game. None of them have spoken up about wanting to get in the ring with Spence and risk their necks.
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