By Jason Kim:, Undefeated Floyd Mayweather Jr. has to start looking at alternative opponents to substitute in place of Manny Pacquiao if he’s unable to have his mega fight with the Filipino star put together in the near future. While the Pacquiao fight is the idea; bout because it’s the fight that fans want to see and the one that will make Mayweather the most money, he has to be realistic about this and consider that it may not be possible to put this fight together for one reason or another.
This is why Mayweather and his team need to look at a number of other fighters to get in the ring with rather than Pacquiao. Looking over the light welterweight, welterweight and junior middleweight divisions, I’ve compiled a list of fighters that I think would be more suitable replacements for a Pacquiao fight and would give Mayweather a huge payday if he fought them.
1; Sergio Martinez
2. Amir Khan
3. Timothy Bradley
4. Devon Alexander
5. Paul Williams
Sadly, that’s about all I could find unless Mayweather wants to drop his high standards some and take some slightly lower quality contenders to fight. I can think of a million decent contenders that I think Mayweather would be able to draw well with and come up with at least 1 million pay per view buys against. I don’t think any of them would necessarily make for exciting fights but I think Mayweather would at least be able to come up with some respectable PPV numbers if he were to use these fighters.
Mayweather’s best option is to fight Martinez immediately, because he’s the hot fighter right now with his 12 round decision over Kelly Pavlik in his last fight. Martinez has a fighting style similar to Mayweather and has respectable power. Khan should surpass Martinez in popularity very soon, even with Khan’s promotional company matching him soft. Khan will become famous just for face that he looks good and has blazing hand speed.
Again, Pacquiao would be the ideal pick for Mayweather to fight, but Pacquiao will have to give in to what Mayweather is asking for with the drug testing and the purse split. Mayweather is in the power position for the negotiations because he took on the bigger challenge in defeating Shane Mosley in his last fight. Instead of sidestepping around this fight and taking on the arguably much easier Joshua Clottey like Pacquiao did, Mayweather took the much tougher bout and faced Mosley and beat him with ease.
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