By Eric Baldwin: Floyd Mayweather Jr. says there’s no truth to the talk of him coming out of retirement to fight newly crowned WBO welterweight champion Manny Pacquiao in a rematch.
Many boxing fans got the impression that Mayweather would return to the ring after he showed up with his daughter to watch Pacquiao’s November 5th fight against former WBO 147lb champion Jessie Vargas at the Thomas & Mack Center in Las Vegas, Nevada. Mayweather had been invited to the fight by Pacquiao.
The fight was won by Pacquiao by a 12 round unanimous decision, but he was far from impressive. It wasn’t the Pacquiao that we’d seen in the past. He wasn’t attacking Vargas in a sustained manner like he’d done with his opponents in the past.
The Pacquiao that beat Miguel Cotto, Ricky Hatton and Oscar De La Hoya would have destroyed Vargas and made it look easy.
Pacquiao’s promoter Bob Arum said recently that there’s a 75% chance that Pacquiao and Mayweather would fight each other. Apparently, Arum spoke too soon, because Mayweather is saying that it’s false. He was just attending the fight with his daughter.
Mayweather said this via RingTV.com about a potential rematch with Pacquiao:
“It was just a daddy-daughter day,” Mayweather said. “I took my daughter out. We had fun. And we enjoyed ourselves. Totally false,” Mayweather said of Arum’s comments about there being 75% chance of a rematch against Pacquiao taking place. “If you don’t hear it from my mouth, it’s not true.”
If Mayweather is going to return to boxing to resume his career, it’s going to need to be his call. I don’t think it helps for anyone from Pacquiao’s side to be mentioning a potential rematch with Mayweather. If Mayweather is going to continue his career, then it’s going to be something that he feels is the smart thing to do.
I know for a lot of fans it would be a no brainer to return to the ring. If they had the chance of making $100 million for one fight, most of them would do it. If a normal person had the chance of increasing their wealth by one-fourth overnight, they would do it. Mayweather is different though. He’s already made a bunch of money, and he’s totally set for life.
Adding another $100 million to Mayweather’s estimated net worth of $400 million might not be important to him. It would raise his net worth considerably, but if he doesn’t feel the effort expended for one fight is worth it to make $100 million or so, then you can’t pressure him. It’s his decision to turn down the payday and focus on other things in his life.
You would hope that Mayweather doesn’t live to regret this later on in life as he matures and changes as a person. With age comes wisdom. If Mayweather looks back at this later in life, hopefully he doesn’t regret it if he doesn’t take the Pacquiao rematch. It would be too late by that point to go back and change things.
It would be great news if Mayweather were to agree to fight Pacquiao a second time, because with a little marketing, the fight could do quite well on pay-per-view. There are possibly enough casual boxing fans that aren’t still angry from the last time they fought each other to make it a huge success once again.
It’s debatable whether Mayweather-Pacquiao II would bring in anywhere near the same PPV numbers as the previous time they fought. What could hurt the success of a second Mayweather vs. Pacquiao fight is the fact that Mayweather hasn’t fought in over a year. When Mayweather did last fight, he fought a non-relevant fighter in Andre Berto, who isn’t seen by boxing fans as among the very best in the division right now. He’s just a contender and not seen as world champion level fighter any longer.
Mayweather should have fought the true top fighters like Keith Thurman, Kell Brook or Shawn Porter. Danny Garcia wouldn’t have been a great fight. It would have had to have been someone like Thurman, Brook or Porter at that time. Not surprisingly, the fans weren’t excited at seeing Mayweather fight an aging fighter like Andre Berto. The fans wanted to see Mayweather fight someone good and take a risk with his career.
Mayweather-Berto should have been a non-PPV fight, because it was more of a Mayweather vs. Robert Guerrero type of fight. In other words, it was a complete mismatch on paper. There was no drama. Everyone knew Mayweather would easily beat Berto, and that’s what happened. Now with a year having gone by with Mayweather not fighting, it’s possible that the boxing public won’t want to see him fight Pacquiao a second time. They might need to really market the fight if they want it to be a success, because Mayweather has been out of sight for so long now.
Pacquiao hasn’t looked great in his two fights against Tim Bradley and Jessie Vargas. Those were not fighters that the fans wanted to see Pacquiao fight. Pacquiao is doing the same thing Mayweather did in his last fight by fighting guys that the fans aren’t excited about. The fans did like the first two times Pacquiao fought Bradley, but by the third time he fought him, it just looked like one of those ‘money grab’ type of fight, without purpose other than to make money.
Pacquiao’s fight against Jessie Vargas was seen as Pacquiao fighting the weakest of the welterweight champions by a lot of fans. That was not a good choice. Pacquiao won a title, but it was seen as a paper title. There’s winning titles and there’s REALLY winning titles, and the one Pacquiao won off of Vargas was more of a paper title in beating one of his promoter Bob Arum’s champions rather than THE champion at 147. The WBO 147lb belt has been passed from one Top Rank fighter to another recently. Pacquiao needed to break that pattern by fighting someone like Keith Thurman for his WBA belt or someone from the 154lb division like Saul Canelo Alvarez.
The Mayweather vs. Pacquiao fight last year in May 2015 brought in 4.6 million pay-per-view buys in shattering the old pay-per-view record of 2.4 million buys. The sold a ton of buys, and made huge profits. However, the match was a disappointment in the eyes of the boxing fans, because Mayweather and Pacquiao never really attacked each other in a sustained manner that the fan were hoping to see from them. They both were paid a ton of money for the fight, so the conventional wisdom was that the fight fans would see a great fight with nonstop action. What they got instead was two fighters playing it safe, trying not to get hit. Mayweather ran around the ring while Pacquiao stood frozen on the outside, looking like he was afraid to attack.
If Mayweather does come back to boxing, hopefully he doesn’t do something odd like fighting Danny Garcia rather than Pacquiao. There will be some fans interested in a Mayweather-Garcia fight, but not like with a rematch against Pacquiao. Mayweather needs to pick someone that is perceived to be a good fighter. If not Pacquiao, then he needs to fight a true top guy not someone from the past for nostalgic purposes. The fight against Berto looked bad, because it had no real purpose. What has Berto done since that loss? Not much. Mayweather needs to fight a top guy if he does come back. Mayweather can obviously do whatever he wants, but the boxing fans might not be too excited about wanting to see him fight if he chooses someone that perceives to be out of his class. Even Pacquiao might be perceived as not being in the same class as Mayweather after the way he was soundly beaten last year by him, but I still think he gives Mayweather the best chance to make money.