Ellerbe confirms Mayweather will be retiring after Berto fight

By Boxing News - 08/17/2015 - Comments

By Chris Williams: Boxing fans are about to see the last of WBA/WBC welterweight champion Floyd Mayweather Jr. (48-0, 26 KOs) when he faces Andre Berto (30-3, 23 KOs) next month on September 12th in their fight on Showtime pay-per-view. While some boxing fans, writers, fighters and trainers believe that Mayweather won’t be able to resist coming back in 2016 to go after win No.50, Mayweather promotions CEO Leonard Ellerbe says that won’t be happening.

Mayweather will be closing the door on his fabulous career after he defeats the 31-year-old Berto at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nevada. Ellerb points out that Mayweather has made a half a billion dollars during his career, and that’s he’s ready to call it a day and move on to other things in life.

“Here’s a guy who’s made well over a half-billion dollars, doing it his way, and he can ride off into the sunset after this,” Ellerbe said to Mlive.com.

Yes, Mayweather has made so much cash during his 19-year pro career, and there’s really no point in him sticking around to defeat guys like Amir Khan, Keith Thurman, Shawn Porter or Danny Garcia. Those are all flawed fighters who don’t bring much to the table in terms of money for Mayweather or in terms of what they would add to Mayweather’s legacy. Beating them would be more of a lower level accomplishment for Mayweather.

The only fighter that would do anything or Mayweather’s career at this point would be Gennady Golovkin. If Mayweather beat Golovkin, it would be a tremendous victory and great way for Mayweather to end his career. But for him to beat Porter, Khan, Thurman, Garcia or Tim Bradley, those wins would be too shallow to give Mayweather much of a shot in the arm.

“That’s a fact. This is Floyd’s last fight,” Ellerbe said. “I’m not trying to sell it that way. This is going to be his last fight. And the fans get a chance to see Floyd in a very, very exciting fight with a guy that we know is coming to fight.”

Some boxing fans think that Mayweather is selling the Berto fight as his last one of his career in order to get people willing to buy the fight on pay-per-view. The thought is if fans think it is Mayweather’s very last fight of his career, then they’ll feel a sense of urgency to purchase the fight on PPV, because they’ll think that if they miss it then it’ll be over with.

I don’t think Mayweather would ever stoop so low as to sell the Berto fight as his last one just so that he can get a few more PPV buys from the boxing public. If Mayweather was desperate for money, he would have selected Golovkin as his next opponent, and the fight would have brought in at least 2-3 million pay-per-view buys.

Golovkin has the ability to get a lot of Mexican fans to purchase his fights on PPV due to his “Mexican style” of fighting, as he calls it. If Mayweather wanted to get every last penny out of September 12th fight, he surely would have selected Golovkin. But that’s not what this is about.

Mayweather chose Berto as his next opponent because 1. He’s the interim WBA 147lb. champion 2. He’s got one of the most exciting styles in boxing 3. He’s better than most of the welterweights 4. He’s more recognizable to casual boxing fans than the top welterweights
There’s going to be a huge void that will be left in the wake of Mayweather retiring from boxing in September.

I don’t know if there’s anyone right off the bat that can step into that void to take Mayweather’s place as a huge pay-per-view star that can carry the sport on his back. Certainly you can’t expect the aging Filipino star Manny Pacquiao to take Mayweather’s place as the No.1 star. Further, you can’t expect guys like Saul “Canelo” Alvarez, Miguel Cotto or Tim Bradley to take over the spot left behind by Mayweather.

Former three division world champion Adrien Broner was thought to be the guy that would take over for Mayweather, but with Broner’s losses to Marcos Maidana and Shawn Porter, it’s pretty clear that he won’t be the one to take over for Mayweather. That’s not to say that Broner can’t eventually take over the No.1 spot from Mayweather, but it’ going to take some changes to his low work rate and it’s going to require that he matures to become more focused on the sport. I think Broner has the most potential of all the fighters in boxing to become the No.1 guy, but he seems like someone would be quickly ruined by the success even if he did take over the top spot briefly. The guy that moves in to take over Mayweather’s spot has to be someone who is humble, hardworking, and not someone who has a ton outside interests. It won’t work if the guy that takes over Mayweather’s spot has an outside dream of becoming a great singer, because he’ll spend too much time in that endeavor instead of on the occupation that made him the money in the first place.

Boxing fans will obviously be upset that they won’t be able to see a rematch between Mayweather and Pacquiao because there are many people who feel that Pacquiao would have a chance in a rematch if he went into the fight 100 percent instead of going into it licking a wound that he suffered in training camp. But Mayweather doesn’t feel like Pacquiao deserves a second fight with him, and he’s already said so.

Mayweather doesn’t want to give Pacquiao a second chance because he feels that he was a poor sport about losing their fight last May. Pacquiao failed to admit that he lost the fight, and he brought up an injury afterwards. Those two things Pacquiao look really bad in the eyes of a lot of boxing fans. Would Mayweather have given Pacquiao a second shot if he’d admitted that he lost the fight and if he’d not complained about an injury? I don’t know. I do think it would have helped Pacquiao’s case ion trying to get a rematch.



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