Roach doubts Mayweather will retire and leave money on the table

By Boxing News - 09/23/2015 - Comments

roach777By Allan Fox: Floyd Mayweather Jr. (49-0, 26 KOs) has a lot of boxing fans wondering whether he’ll be permanently retiring from the sport after his win over Andre Berto on September 12th. Mayweather still insists that he’s done with the sport after winning his 49th fight and picking up a payday of $32 million for an easy night’s work against the over-matched Berto at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nevada.

But Freddie Roach, the trainer for Manny Pacquiao, doesn’t believe Mayweather is going to actually retire from boxing. Roach thinks that with Mayweather’s huge spending habits and with the way he’s quickly burning through his fortune, he’ll be back next year to continue his pro career.

Roach thinks that Mayweather won’t be able to walk away and leave all the available money he can make on the table.

“Do you really think he’s [Mayweather] going to retire?” Roach said to esnewsporting.com. “Do you think he’s going to leave all that money on the table? I don’t. With the way he spends money and all the cars he has,” Roach said.

To be sure, it would be an insane move on Mayweather’s part if he did walk away from the sport because he has a chance to make another $200 million to $300 million by sticking around long. While Mayweather has made enough money to satisfy most boxing fans of the sport, he’s spending so quickly with his purchases of cars and expensive jewelry, as well as his gambling, it’s definitely possible that he could wind up spending his entire fortune in a short period of time. That’s why it makes all the sense in the world for him to continue with his career and pick up the money that’s still on the table, roughly $300 million, and then go off into the sunset in 2017 or 2018 after fighting four more times.

Speaking about Mayweather’s dull fight against Andre Berto, Roach said “I feel asleep. I want my money back.”

For Mayweather to maximize his earnings in the remainder of his career, he’s going to need to avoid fighting anymore Andre Berto type fighters. If Mayweather chooses to comeback just so he can fight additional easy marks, then he’ll be hurting his legacy and hurting the sport. He’ll also be messing up the amount of money he can make. Mayweather already arguably lost many millions by choosing to fight Berto instead of someone like Amir Khan, Keith Thurman or Gennady Golovkin.

That’s money that is lost forever. Mayweather can make sure that he doesn’t make any more foolish decisions like that by electing to fight only the best if/when he returns to the ring in 2016. That means he’s going to need to fight the likes of Golovkin, Saul “Canelo” Alvarez, Miguel Cotto, Manny Pacquiao, Khan or Thurman. He can only fight those type of fighters if he wants to get the most out of his legacy and make the most money.

If Mayweather comes back in 2016, and decides he doesn’t want to take punishment, like he did when he chose to fight Berto, he’ll be really doing a number on his legacy if he continues to choose weak opponents. It’ll be impossible for Mayweather to say that he’s ‘The Best Ever’ [TBE] if he’s going to continue to fight safe opponents.



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