Mundine wants Mayweather fight in September

By Boxing News - 07/06/2015 - Comments

mundine4By Dan Ambrose: In an open letter former WBA super middleweight champion Anthony Mundine (47-6, 27 KOs) posted on his twitter account today, Mundine called out WBA/WBC junior middleweight champion Floyd Mayweather Jr. (48-0, 26 KOs) for September, saying he’s “the only one that can solve the Mayvinchi Code” if given the chance.

Mundine, 40, is ranked #4 WBA, #4 WBC, so he’s not even ranked high enough to be a mandatory challenger for Mayweather at junior middleweight, if Mayweather even cared about stuff like that. What Mayweather does care about is whether his opponents have a fan base in the United States, and unfortunately for Mundine, I don’t think he has much of any fan base in America.

He’s known by hardcore boxing fans, and he’s not seen as a threat to Mayweather or a number of other fighters at 154. Mundine’s one-sided loss to 35-year-old Joshua Clottey last year in April pretty much ruined what little chance Mundine had of ever getting a fight against Mayweather. Mundine was knocked down five times by Clottey in losing a 12 round decision. About the only good thing you can say about Mundine from that fight was that he made it the full 12 rounds.

“I revived boxing in my country,” Mundine said as quoted by 9news.com.au. “It was dead and I gave it mouth-to-mouth – and I’ve held it down for 15 years!” Mundine said. “I heard you mentioned names like Mayfield & Berto as your next opponents. I’m the mandatory and that should looked at. I’ve got other attributes that none of these cats got! Makes for a good boxing spectacle both in and outta the ring. It’s what the boxing fans need to see!”

Mayweather vs. Mundine would be about as good as Mayweather vs. Karim Mayfield. However, Mayweather would be better off facing Andre Berto if he were looking for an undeserving easy mark for his next fight. Mundine would be no threat to beating Mayweather, but he wouldn’t bring in any fans to watch the fight in America. At least if Mayweather were to fight Berto, he’d get a few fans and might be able to get enough pay-per-view buys to make it worthwhile. But if he fights Mundine, we’re probably talking about a fight that does less than 700,000 pay-per-view buys. It would be a big mistake for Mayweather to face Mundine because not enough fans know about who the Australian fighter is, and the ones that did know about him likely wouldn’t be interested in seeing the mismatch.

Mundine was a decent fighter many years ago when he fought at super middleweight, but after a loss to Mikkel Kessler in 2005, Mundine fought mostly Australian fighters for seven years in facing fighters like Sam Soliman, Danny Green, Daniel Geale and Garth Wood. Mundine was beaten by Geale and Wood. Those losses hurt Mundine’s career because he should have been able to beat fighters like that if he was truly one of the top guys.

In Mundine’s last four fights, he’s beaten Gunnar Jackson, Shane Mosley and Sergey Rabchenko. He lost to Clottey last year.



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