By Allan Fox: Former eight division world champion Manny Pacquiao says that Floyd Mayweather Jr’s concern is not for the fan or the love of the sport of boxing, but rather for making money. Pacquiao say he’s different than Mayweather. He wants to entertain the fans by putting on the best show possible to entertain them. Pacquiao is fighting WBO welterweight champion Jessie Vargas on November 5 at the Mandalay Bay Resort in Las Vegas, Nevada.
“I know in my heart, he doesn’t have a concern for the fans,” said Pacquiao to the boxing media about Mayweather. “He has a concern for money, but my concern is not for making money from the fans or from the people. My concern is how to entertain the people. How I entertain the fans. We have to remember as a fighter, your concern, your responsibility is to make the people happy, to make the fans happy.”
In an Instagram post Mayweather put up on his social media site this week, it shows him sitting on a bad filled with $1 million in cash. Mayweather is fiddling around with his cell phone while the camera pans all the money on his bed. It’s unclear what the video is supposed to be letting people know about him. There’s a website address attached to the video for merchandise for people to purchase products.
There were a lot of angry fans last year after Mayweather and Pacquiao fought to a boring 12 round decision. Mayweather just boxed and moved for 12 rounds rather than looking to KO Pacquiao to make an interesting fight for all the boxing fans that paid a lot of money to watch it.
Mayweather didn’t help himself by ending his pro career by fighting Andre Berto in his last fight in September 2015 rather than fighting one of the younger and more talented fighters. You can argue that Mayweather was just looking to get easy money in facing Berto rather than taking on a talented contender or champion at 147 like Errol Spence Jr., Keith Thurman or Shawn Porter. That’s not to say that Mayweather Jr. couldn’t have beaten those fighters at the time, but it would have been a far better product for the boxing fans to watch than to see Mayweather schooling 32-year-old Berto, who has seen better days in his career.
Pacquiao is not immune to criticism. Instead of facing Terrence Crawford in his next fight in November, he chose to fight Vargas, who many fans see as a paper champion and the weakest link of the current 147 belt holders. Crawford isn’t a welterweight and he’s not a pay-per-view attraction in the true sense, but he’s clearly a better fighter than Vargas. If Pacquiao is just going to fight the guys in his elderly promoter Bob Arum’s Top Rank stable for the remainder of his career, then he should have fought Crawford.
Even if he’s the only guy that Pacquiao ever fights again for the remainder of his career, it would still be a far better match-up than watching him fight guys like Vargas, Chris Algieri and Brandon Rios. Pacquiao has had a lot of easy mismatches in the last three years of his career when you remove his fights against Mayweather and Tim Bradley from the equation.
At this point it’s hard to say whether Mayweather was concerned with entertaining the fans. Other than fighting Saul Canelo Alvarez in 2013, Mayweather stopped fighting the best years ago. Pacquiao wasn’t in his prime when they fought last year, and Mayweather’s other fights in the last three years were mismatches against Marcos Maidana and Robert Guerrero. Pacquiao is in the same boat. His only tough fight since his loss to Juan Manuel Marquez in 2012 came against Mayweather.
