By Jim Dower: According to Dan Rafael of ESPN, Floyd Mayweather Jr. (39-0, 25 KOs) is poised to make a comeback on July 11th, looking at fighting the winner of the May 2nd bout between Ricky Hatton and Manny Pacquiao. Mayweather, now 32, hasn’t stepped foot in the ring since beating Ricky Hatton by a 10th round stoppage a year and half ago in December 2007. Shortly after that bout, an emotional Mayweather announced his retirement from boxing and was said to be concentrating on becoming a business man.
Mayweather is also interested in fighting Shane Mosley and Juan Manuel Marquez. In the case of Marquez, Mayweather has an eager opponent, as Juan called out Mayweather this past month after stopping Juan Diaz.
Mayweather would like to fight a tune-up before fighting a big named opponent, and would like the fight to be a PPV bout on HBO. The July 11th date may be a problem, however, because that date was originally planned to be the date for HBO to show the cruiserweight championship bout between Tomasz Adamek and Bernard Hopkins, so that’s going to need to be worked out by HBO to find another date, presumably, for the Adamek-Hopkins fight to take place.
Nothing is set in stone about Mayweather’s comeback as of yet, as HBO isn’t talking yet about the details.
Mayweather has taken a lot of criticism in his choices of opponents before his retirement, as well as his timing of stepping away from the sport. Prior to retiring, Mayweather had fought Oscar De La Hoya and Ricky Hatton in back to back fights, beating both of them but upsetting many boxing fans, who felt that Mayweather was only interested in taking easy fights against opponents that he knew he could beat.
At the time, welterweights Paul Williams, Antonio Margarito and Miguel Cotto were the top welterweights in the division, and each one of them were interested in a fight with Mayweather. Instead of taking on one of them, and perhaps losing, Mayweather opted to take on the older De La Hoya and smaller Hatton.
It was hoped that once Mayweather had beaten both of them, he would finally turn his sights on the fighters considered to be the best in the division. However, instead Mayweather retired. Before he did, however, he had been planning on fighting a 2nd fight with De La Hoya.
Given that the first fight was hardly interesting to watch, there were a lot of upset people who felt that Mayweather was continuing to duck the best fighters in the division by electing to fight a rematch with De La Hoya. Much to the relief of some, that fight fell through and Mayweather subsequently retired.
According to Rafael, Mayweather has some problems with the IRS, which is probably one of the reasons why Mayweather is interested in making a comeback.
The hope here is that Pacquiao will emerge as the winner of his fight with Hatton, because the prospects of watching a rematch between Mayweather and Hatton is less than appealing, considering that Hatton was dominated through much of the fight with Mayweather before finally being stopped in the 10th.
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