By Dan Ambrose: Heavyweight world champion Wladimir Klitschko says he believes unbeaten Floyd Mayweather Jr. (49-0, 26 KOs) isn’t finished for good with his pro career despite him having officially retired following his victory over Andre Berto last September in Las Vegas, Nevada.
The 39-year-old Klitschko expects Mayweather to come back for at least one more fight so that he can break the late Rocky Marciano’s 49-0 record by hitting No.50 before he walks away for good. Wladimir just has a feeling that Mayweather will want to come back to get that 50th win.
For some reason, Klitschko thinks that it’s not a good thing for fighters to be undefeated. He thinks it makes them vulnerable when they have undefeated records. A lot of boxing fans would disagree with Klitschko. They think that an unbeaten record indicates the fighter has proven he’s a cut above his competition and doesn’t know how to lose. Klitschko thinks otherwise.
“I think he still has some fight there,” Klitschko said about Mayweather to Dan Rafael of ESPN.com. “I think the 50-year-old record, you know, to be tied with Rocky Marciano is cool. I still really believe that he’s not going to retire for some reason, even if he announced it. But I think he’s going to go ahead and do at least one more (fight).”
If Mayweather isn’t interested in coming back to fight Manny Pacquiao and Saul “Canelo” Alvarez a second time, which he has already indicated, then it’s almost impossible to assume that Mayweather will come back to fight someone else. I can’t see anyone out there that Mayweather would in fact be interested in fighting. He’s already ruled out fighting Gennady Golovkin, because he feels he’s too big.
There’s no reason for Mayweather to fight Miguel Cotto again now that he’s been beaten by Canelo. Welterweights like Kell Brook, Danny Garcia, Tim Bradley and Amir Khan lack the popularity for Mayweather to fight them. Besides that, none of them has a big victory on their resumes.
Brook is being matched against weak opposition by his promoter Eddie Hearn, and Bradley is in the same boat with him being put in with soft opposition by his promoter Bob Arum of Top Rank. Khan seems to be in the shutdown mode of his career ever since his back to back losses to Lamont Peterson and Danny Garcia three to four years ago. Khan is just being matched weakly and looking for a big payday/cash out fight against Pacquiao and Mayweather. It doesn’t look like he’s ever going to get that fight he’s been dreaming of.
“I think it’s a downside to be undefeated. You are so confident and your attitude is so up in the sky you don’t know the other side,” Klitschko said. “Undefeated guys don’t know their limits and you can show them their limits unless you are Floyd Mayweather.”
The only problem with fighters with unbeaten records is that they – or their promoters – seem to become afraid of being matched against difficult opposition. In many cases, they stop taking the dangerous fights and only look for money fights that they’re confident of winning. If they don’t feel they can win, then you see excuses for not taking the fights. However, it doesn’t always take a fighter with an unbeaten record to act like this. You can see a lot of fighters with superb records playing it safe if they’ve got a huge following. They’ll look for weight advantages over their opposition, and find reasons not to take on dangerous opposition.
If Mayweather does come back in 2016, I think he might do it to face someone like WBO light welterweight champion Terence Crawford. If Crawford defeats Pacquiao with ease in April, then I can see that being something bothers Mayweather enough for him to want to come out of retirement to show that Crawford’s not only his level.
The reason why I think Mayweather would want to face Crawford is because it would reflect badly on Mayweather if Crawford was able to beat Pacquiao easier and in a more impressive manner than he did in his 12 round unanimous decision victory over the Filipino fighter earlier this year in May 2015. If Crawford schools Pacquiao and/or knocks him out, it’s going to put Crawford near the top of the sport, and likely call into question Mayweather’s own victory over Pacquiao by cheapening it.
Wladimir will be defending his IBF/IBO/WBA/WBO heavyweight titles this Saturday night against unbeaten Tyson Fury (24-0, 18 KOs) at the ESPRIT Arena in Dusseldorf, Germany.
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