By Dan Ambrose: Superstar Floyd Mayweather Jr. (49-0, 26 KOs) hasn’t closed the door on making a comeback to resume his boxing career. The 39-year-old Mayweather hasn’t fought since last September in beating an over-matched Andre Berto by a lopsided 12 round unanimous decision in a farewell fight of sorts on Showtime pay-per-view.
Fans want to see Mayweather come back to resume his career by fighting Manny Pacquiao in a rematch. Mayweather has resisted the notion thus far. Perhaps if Pacquiao puts in a good performance in his fight tonight against World Boxing Organization heavyweight champion Jessie Vargas, it might be enough to bring Mayweather out of retirement.
That would be a big deal if he did, because the sport misses Mayweather. We’ve quickly found out there’s been a giant hole left in boxing since Mayweather left, and there’s no one in the sport that is remotely talented or popular enough to fill that large gap. Mexican star Saul “Canelo” Alvarez has failed to become the crossover star that he needs to be for him to bring in the kind of pay-per-view buys that Mayweather brought in.
Part of the problem with Canelo failing to become more popular has to do with the weak match-making that’s been done by his promoters at Golden Boy Promotions. They’ve failed to match him tough by putting him in with middleweight champions Gennady “GGG” Golovkin and Daniel Jacobs. Pacquiao has failed to increase his own popularity since his loss to Mayweather due to the same kind of safe match-making. Instead of Pacquiao being matched tough, his promoters have put him back in with Tim Bradley and now they’re matching him against WBO welterweight champion Jessie Vargas, who isn’t seen as the best at 147 even the third best.
Mayweather said this to Fighthype.com on Friday:
“My dad asked me when I was coming back. You know, is the door still open? Absolutely,” Mayweather said. “It [the spar] felt okay, I guess. I don’t miss it. I got in there to spar; it was a lesson I was teaching the young fighters in the gym. I may need a little bit more time off, you know, because as of right now, I’m not missing it.”
It’ll be interesting to see if Mayweather will come back in 2017. He’s going to need to make his comeback soon if he wants to give himself a good chance of still having his boxing skills intact. He can’t wait too long for him to return, because when a fighter has been inactive for a long time, it tends to cause their skills to deteriorate.