Mayweather will need big name to bring back fans for comeback fight

By Boxing News - 05/02/2016 - Comments

Image: Mayweather will need big name to bring back fans for comeback fightBy Jeff Aranow: Last Saturday, Floyd Mayweather Jr. (49-0, 26 KOs) dropped a big hint that he’ll be possibly making a comeback soon for the right price of 9-figures in talking to Showtime. Mayweather will be looking for win No.50, and it’s already said that Mayweather Promotions has trademarked a couple of names related to victory No.50.

The next question is who will the 39-year-old Mayweather be fighting. We already know that his last fight against Andre Berto failed to ring in a ton of PPV buys like we’d seen from Mayweather in the past.

“If I came back, of course, it would have to be a nine-figure payday and probably a championship fight,” Mayweather said to Showtime.

We can only speculate that the reason why the drop off in PPV buys is because boxing fans have lost interest in Mayweather’s fights due to his overpriced and unperformed fight against Manny Pacquiao in 2015, a fight that saw the tickets and PPV price hiked to an all-time high. Many boxing fans felt that they were overcharged for a bad product.

Mayweather had a chance to make it to the fans in his next fight in September of last year, but instead of choosing a big name, Mayweather hand-picked an old lion in Andre Berto, who hadn’t been a relevant fighter since 2011.

Mayweather said he would make it exciting against Berto in trying for a knockout, but instead we saw Mayweather toying with him and fighting in a safety first manner for 12 rounds.

The network that signs Mayweather for his comeback fight will need to think seriously about getting an agreement from him that he’s going to take on a big name so that they have a chance of bringing in a lot of customers in terms of PPV buys and new subscribers. It’s no use if they give Mayweather a huge 9-figure payday just to see Mayweather select someone like Andre Berto or Victor Ortiz, while justifying the selection of one of them by pointing out that they were just involved in a big fight.

Berto got the fight with Mayweather last September because he beat a non-ranked fighter names Josesito Lopez, who at the time of his career that he lost to Berto, was no longer ranked in the top 15 at 147 due to his many defeats.

Here are the potential fighters that Mayweather will likely be choosing from for his comeback fight:

1. Danny Garcia
2. Adrien Broner
3. Amir Khan
4. Manny Pacquiao
5. Keith Thurman
6. Saul Canelo Alvarez
7. Shawn Porter
8. Kell Brook

Mayweather has talked a lot about Danny Garcia in the past about a fight between them. Mayweather seems to think it would be a big fight. The reality is that it probably wouldn’t. The hardcore boxing fans already know that Garcia is nothing special now that he’s moved up to welterweight. They saw how Garcia struggled to beat Robert Guerrero and Lamont Peterson recently, two fighters that the better fighters in the 147lb division would likely destroy. Garcia almost lost to both guys.

It’s pretty clear in watching those fights that Garcia needs to move back down to 140 and try and somehow beat the guy that took his WBC title in Viktor Postol. Garcia wasn’t too keen in fighting Postol in the past, and he moved up in weight rather than taking the fight against the tall 5’11” Ukrainian. I suspect that Garcia would lose to Postol and have to try and go after one of the other belts. The casual boxing fans in the U.S. probably don’t know who Garcia is.

If Mayweather selects Garcia, then he might end up getting stuck with another fight with low PPV sales. If the network that signs Mayweather to the deal is fine with that, then more power to them. I think it would be a huge mistake on their part, but that would be there problem.

Garcia vs. Mayweather wouldn’t be a big deal in PPV, because arguably isn’t even the fifth best welterweight in the division. I rate Thurman, Porter, Tim Bradley, Errol Spence and Khan above him. I think Khan is a better fighter than Garcia is, even though he lost to him.

Mayweather vs. Adrien Broner isn’t much better than Mayweather-Garcia. Broner has already been between twice by Marcos Maidana and Porter, and he’s not seen as a major player in the sport. I don’t know of too many people who would pick Broner to beat Terence Crawford or Postol at 140. We already saw that Broner is simply too small and limited to fight at welterweight. Broner was only good when he was fighting in the lower weights, where he had a weight advantage over his opponents. Broner was good at super featherweight and lightweight. He’s not the same fighter at light welterweight, and definitely not the same fighter at welterweight.

If Mayweather wants to bring the fans back, he’s going to need to take a risk of being potentially knocked out badly by facing Gennady Golovkin, the destroyer at middleweight. Mayweather has said in the past that he’s a better fighter than Sugar Ray Robinson. This is the type of fight that Robinson almost surely would have taken during his career. If Robinson was around today and he saw a fighter with an unbeaten record like Golovkin, he would likely agree to fight him. I don’t think Robinson would even make Golovkin boil down in weight to 154.

I think Robinson would move up to 160 to fight Golovkin were he is comfortable at middleweight, because that’s the type of fighter Robinson was. If Mayweather wants to do what Robinson would likely have done, then he needs to step it up a little and take a real risk of his unbeaten record by fighting Golovkin. Win No.50 won’t mean much if all Mayweather is going to do is take a safe pick by selecting Danny Garcia or Adrien Broner.

I don’t see those fights bring in a lot of PPV buys, which I’m sure the network that signs Mayweather to an expensive deal will be concerned about. If the network has their heads screwed on correctly, they’ll know that Mayweather vs. Danny Garcia or Mayweather vs. Broner will not sell in big numbers. At best, I see those fights bring in around 400,000 buys on PPV.

If Mayweather is going to be getting over $100 million from a network for his comeback fight, then the math won’t work out. A fight generating only 400,000 buys will cause the network to lose huge money on a Mayweather. That’s why I think it’s imperative that if Mayweather does come back, then he’s going to need to fight Golovkin, because that’s the only fight that has a real chance of bringing in over 1 million buys unless Manny Pacquiao comes back.