By Dave Lahr: Floyd Mayweather Jr., has disappeared once before after making a ton of loot in his fights with Oscar De La Hoya and Ricky Hatton in 2007, staying away for close to two years from the sport until returning recently to announce that he was going fight Juan Manuel Marquez on July 18th in Las Vegas.
However, Mayweather Jr. seems to make no bones about letting people know that his main interest in coming back is getting a huge paycheck rather than the pound-for-pound accolades that have recently been heaved on Manny Pacquiao’s shoulders by boxing fans.
If Mayweather can beat both Marquez and Pacquiao in back to back fights, Mayweather will likely make a huge mega million dollar payday in both fights, and earn enough to last Mayweather Jr. for a life time if he’s wise with his money.
Beating Pacquiao and Marquez would only be the beginning of the top level opponents that are out there for Mayweather to fight, since there’s still Shane Mosley, Paul Williams and Miguel Cotto for Mayweather still to fight before performing his disappearing act again.
However, I don’t think for a second that Mayweather will stick around to fight any of them. Instead, my thoughts are that Mayweather will take off one another one of his long retreats, using the time to spend his money, have a good time and wait for another big named opponent to surface from the boxing heap.
I figure Williams, Cotto and Mosley will grow old waiting for Mayweather to turn their attention to them, because it just won’t happen. It’s too bad, because these are fights that boxing fans really want to see and would purchase this fight in large numbers if it were offered.
But it just doesn’t seem likely to happen knocking how Mayweather likes to select safe fights that he knows he can win. Mayweather’s latest trend seems to be for him to select smaller opponents like Ricky Hatton, Marquez and Pacquiao to go after.
I suspect that this trend will continue when Mayweather resurfaces in a couple of years after a fight with Pacquiao. The only thing that will prevent Mayweather from disappearing immediately after a Pacquiao bout is if Mayweather can convince Pacquiao to give him a rematch win or lose regardless of how one-sided the fight turns out to be.
If Mayweather destroys Pacquiao in the first fight, you can look for Mayweather to try and fright Pacquiao a second time if the money’s good. Mayweather wanted to previously fight a rematch with De La Hoya, even though it wasn’t a fight that boxing fans wanted to see.
Mayweather’s fight with De La Hoya in 2007 may have been close with Mayweather winning by a 12-round split decision, but it was boring after De La Hoya ran out of gas after the 6th round and was pot shot for the final six rounds by Mayweather.
I personally couldn’t stomach watching another De La Hoya-Mayweather fight, because you know who’s going to win. De La Hoya would have been beaten as bad if not worse than he was the first time and that’s just the way it would be. If Mayweather can lure Pacquiao or De La Hoya, two popular but beatable fighters, into a rematches then we’ll see Mayweather stick around for a little while longer.
Once Mayweather disappears again, depending on how much he makes in the Marquez and Pacquiao fights, it will likely be another two years before Mayweather comes back again. Eventually, like Sugar Ray Leonard and his comebacks, Mayweather will be too old and too rusty and will take a beating by a younger and likely smaller fighter.
At that point, it will probably be over for Mayweather for huge mega fights. I think he’ll still fight and end up a lot like Roy Jones Jr., fighting less than top level guys and getting beaten every once in awhile. Hopefully, Mayweather won’t try to set up a series of old timer fights so that he can continue to get paid well even though his talent has eroded. That would be bad for Mayweather as well as for boxing fans.
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