By Allan Fox: This past week Top Rank promoter Bob Arum made mention that he feels that Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Manny Pacquiao will likely meet up in a rematch. Even Showtime vice president Stephen Espinoza believes that a rematch between these two stars is possible. However, Mayweather Promotions CEO Leonard Ellerbe says a comeback for the 39-year-old Mayweather isn’t happening right now.
Ellerbe isn’t saying that Mayweather will never return to the sport, but for right now, there’s no talk of him returning to the ring in search of his 50th win of his career.
“Floyd is retired and nothing has changed,” Ellerbe said to Kevin Iole of Yahoo Sports. “There’s nothing else to talk about. He’s enjoying his life as a retired fighter and I’m focused on the company. There has been no talk, nothing, not a word, about Floyd coming back.”
There have been recent rumors that Mayweather is looking to sign a 2-fight contract with one of the networks. If this turns out to be true, hopefully the network gets value from the contract instead of fights between Mayweather and fighters with an inflated ranking like we saw with Mayweather facing Andre Berto and Robert Guerrero. Mayweather needs to fight quality opposition that has a chance of beating him, not guys that are slow, limited or old.
Some boxing fans believe that if Mayweather does come back, it’ll be to fight Adrien Broner, who he has recently had words with. It would be a mismatch because Broner is very slow and flat-footed. Broner has already been exposed twice in his career by Marcos Maidana and Shawn Porter, and he never attempted to avenge those loses. Mayweather vs. Broner would be a similar fight to Mayweather vs. Andre Berto. In other words, it wouldn’t be competitive due to Mayweather being so much better than Broner.
Mayweather is looking to branch out from promoting boxing to promoting MMA fights. He’s very interested in making promoting fights in that sport. However, Mayweather could still make more money if he were to comeback then he would make in promoting on the short term, but it doesn’t look like he’s interested in coming back to take risky fights.
If Mayweather were to come back, boxing fans would want him to fight guys like Manny Pacquiao, Keith Thurman, Saul “Canelo” Alvarez, Gennady Golovkin, Amir Khan, Shawn Porter, Terence Crawford and Shawn Porter. The fans wouldn’t want to see Mayweather take a free ride by facing another Andre Berto or Robert Guerrero level fighter like we saw from Mayweather. Mayweather burned up four of his six fights in his contract with Showtime/CBS taking on less than dangerous opposition.
The only two quality fighters that Mayweather fought in his six-fight contract with Showtime was Pacquiao and Saul “Canelo” Alvarez. Showtime should have insisted when they signed Mayweather to that contract that they could call the shots in picking out his opponents, because maybe then we’d have seen Mayweather fight the likes of Thurman, Bradley, Khan and Porter rather than having to sit through Mayweather’s mismatches against Berto, Guerrero, and Madaiana [x 2]. Those were really poor match-ups, and it’s disappointing that Mayweather was given the green light to fight those fighters instead of the quality contenders in the 147lb division. Showtime would have gotten a much better deal had Mayweather fought Thurman, Khan, Porter, Bradley or Gennady Golovkin. Even a rematch against Canelo would have been far better than the fights that we saw Mayweather take against Berto, Guerrero and Maidana. Those were simple mismatches and not worth the big money that Mayweather received for those fights.
Arum recently said that there was a “better than 50-50 chance of happening,” in mentioning Mayweather coming back to fight Pacquiao a second time. I think that was wishful thinking for the 84-year-old Arum, because Mayweather seems to have lost total interest in fighting Pacquiao after his win over him last May. It took Mayweather six years to finally face him in the first place.
It’s not realistic to think that Mayweather will ever show interest in fighting Pacquiao ever again unless Mayweather squanders his money with bad investments or burning it up by purchasing expensive items with poor resale value like diamond jewelry and cars. Mayweather is spending a lot of his personal wealth on things that he won’t be able to liquidate for the same amount of money if he ever needs it.
Pacquiao is about to be elected into the senate in the Philippines next month. When/if Pacquiao gets elected into that position, a rematch between him and Mayweather will be out of the question. Pacquiao will be stuck in that job for the next six years of his life for better or worse. Continuing his pro boxing career will be out of the question. Signing up for six years in politics could turn out to be a mistake for Pacquiao if he hates the job.
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