By Chris Williams: Judging from recent comments made by Floyd Mayweather Jr., it appears now that he won’t be facing Shane Mosley next or maybe not at all, period. This leaves me to wonder who Mayweather will be besides the obvious, Manny Pacquiao. That’s a fight that many boxing fans want to see but it might not be possible to negotiate because of the egos of the two fighters involved. Mayweather will want the bigger split of the purse, and so will Pacquiao.
If neither fighter gives in, which is what I suspect will happen, then Mayweather will have to look at another options. With Mosley off the table as well, this would mean that Mayweather would be facing a weaker fighter at welterweight, because as of right now, Mosley is considered to be the best welterweight in the division. Of course, Mayweather may opt not to fight a welterweight at all and continue with his trend of selecting for smaller fighters to compete against.
Mayweather says that its okay for him to do this because he used be a super featherweight. But if Mayweather forces his opponent to move up near the welterweight limit for another bout at a catch weight, and then doesn’t come in at the catch weight like he did for his recent fight with lightweight Juan Manuel Marquez, we might see another horrible mismatch with Mayweather beating up a small fighter.
There are only a handful of fighters that Mayweather would likely select from if he were to comb through the super featherweight to the light welterweight divisions. Mayweather probably won’t fight a welterweight, because that hasn’t been his trend in his past two fights.
This leaves a small collection of fighters like Edwin Valero, Humberto Soto, Amir Khan, Timothy Bradley, Marcos Maidana and Devon Alexander to choose from. I can’t see Mayweather being crazy enough to fight someone really small like Ivan Calderon or Vic Darchinyan, but then again I never thought Mayweather would pick a blown up super featherweight like Marquez either.
Right off the bat, I think you can rule out Soto, Maidana, Alexander and Bradley, because they either hit too hard or a too crafty for Mayweather to fight. Besides that, none of them are particularly popular with boxing fans as of now. If Mayweather wanted to choose the best fighter in the light welterweight division, then Bradley would be his choice.
However, I can’t see that happening because Bradley is a tough fighter with excellent hand speed. He’s not the kind of fighter that can be pot shotted all night long like Marquez was. Mayweather would have to battle Bradley if he wanted to win and would get hit much more often than he was against Marquez. For that reason, I doubt that Mayweather would select a fighter like Bradley to fight.
I could see Mayweather going after a rematch with Ricky Hatton, even though the fans don’t want to see a fight like this. I doubt that Mayweather would care two figs what boxing fans felt, because if he did, he wouldn’t have been trying for a rematch with Oscar De La Hoya two years ago before retiring.
Unfortunately, it wouldn’t be as easy as giving Hatton a call and then him agreeing to fight. Hatton seems a little shell shocked from his 2nd round knockout loss to Pacquiao in May, and probably wouldn’t be interested in a fight with Mayweather no matter how much money it would make him.
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