By Allan Fox: Floyd Mayweather Jr. says the worst mistake he made during his boxing career was signing with Top Rank when he turned pro years ago. Mayweather says he would have been popular anyway even without Top Rank.
Mayweather feels that he would have been better off if he hadn’t signed with them. We’ll never know for sure though, as Mayweather stayed with Top Rank long enough for him to become well known to the casual boxing fans in the U.S. Once Mayweather left the promotional company, he was able to use his popularity to make big money fighting on pay-per-view and make a huge fortune.
“As of today, the worst thing I ever did in my career was sign with Top Rank,” said Mayweather to Fighthype. “That’s the worst thing I ever did. The worst thing I ever did was sign with Top Rank, because I was destined to be big anyway. I was destined to be a superstar anyway,” said Mayweather.
You can argue that Mayweather wouldn’t have gotten to where he was without the help of Top Rank at the start of his career. It was only after Mayweather became a household name that he was able to leave Top Rank and start making money on his own. Mayweather has done quite well since leaving Top Rank, but he was helped by them during his time with the promotional company.
I think what hurt Mayweather’s career more than anything was choosing to end his career fighting UFC star Conor McGregor and Andre Berto. Those were terrible fights for the boxing fans that paid to see those mismatches. Neither fight was even remotely entertaining in my view. The fans wanted to see Mayweather fight Keith Thurman in 2015. Instead, Mayweather fought Berto and then retired. When Mayweather made a comeback in 2017, he chose to fight McGregor instead of a boxer like Gennady Golovkin, Thurman or Errol Spence Jr.
McGregor came into the Mayweather fight with a 0-0 record, and the fight was still sanctioned by the Nevada State Athletic Commission. That was sad that the fight was allowed to take place. The fans that paid to watch the Mayweather-McGregor mismatch ended up paying a lot of money to watch the event. It was a waste for Mayweather to end his career by fighting McGregor and Berto. Even before those 2 fights, Mayweather’s match against the injured and old Manny Pacquiao was a disappointment. The fans didn’t know Pacquiao was injured with a shoulder problem. Mayweather’s other fights before that were bad ones against Robert Guerrero and Marcos Maidana. The only good fights in the last 5 years of Mayweather’s career were against Saul Canelo Alvarez and Miguel Cotto.
”Bob Arum is a bitter [expletive]. You made so much money off fighters,” said Mayweather. ”You made more money off of fighters than fighters make. So be happy with that. Go live your life and just chill. You’re that old. You’re almost 90-years-old, and you still want more money. Listen, I’m only 40 and I can’t buy nothing else. What the [expletive] are you trying to buy at 90? You can’t buy nothing else at 90. You want a new suit. Why do you want a new suit when you’ve got 40 years’ worth of suits,” said Mayweather.
