Floyd Mayweather Jr to go to jail for three months starting January 6th; Pacquiao fight has to wait

By Boxing News - 12/21/2011 - Comments

Image: Floyd Mayweather Jr to go to jail for three months starting January 6th; Pacquiao fight has to waitBy Chris Williams: Promoter Bob Arum got some bad news today with the news that World Boxing Council (WBC) welterweight champion Floyd Mayweather Jr. was given a six month sentence today in Clark County for domestic violence against his ex-girlfriend in addition to threatening his children.

Mayweather will only have to serve three months of the sentence in jail, while the other three months are suspended. Mayweather also must participate in a 12 month domestic violence program and pay a $2,500 fine. Mayweather starts serving his 90 day sentence starting January 6th at 10:45 AM.

This is either good or bad news for Arum, the promoter for WBO welterweight champion Manny Pacquiao. It’s hard to say how he’ll take this because he hasn’t been in a big hurray to match his cash cow fighter Pacquiao up against Mayweather in the last year, so he might not care too much. But if he does care, this will slow down a fight between Mayweather and Pacquiao, making it likely that the fight won’t be able to take place until late 2012 at best.

Mayweather won’t be getting out of jail until April, and he would need at least four months at the earliest to be ready for Pacquiao. It’s likely the fight won’t happen until this time next year at the earliest unless both fighters – and their promoters – are interesting in making it happen sooner.

This is obviously bad for Mayweather, because he was hoping just to serve a few day sentence in jail and still be ready for his next planned fight in May 2012 in Las Vegas, Nevada. But that obviously up in smoke now, as he won’t be ready for a fight in May when he’s getting released in April.

Personally, I don’t see the Mayweather-Pacquiao fight happening at all in 2012. I think Arum isn’t ready for this fight yet, as there are still some Top Rank fighters – Mike Jones and Timothy Bradley – that Pacquiao hasn’t fought yet for in-house Top Rank fights, and Pacquiao still hasn’t fought Miguel Cotto for the second time. Once he goes through those three fights, I think Arum will finally put Pacquiao in with Mayweather unless Arum wants to trot out Antonio Margarito for one more fight against Pacquiao in addition to Cotto. You never can tell. I can see another one of Aruum’s fighters, Joshua Clottey, being dragged out as well for one more go around with Pacquiao, while Mayweather sits on the sidelines aging out to the point where Pacquiao might have a better chance of beating him. Right now, if the fight were to take place it’s almost academic that Mayweather would totally dominate Pacquiao, but who knows what will happen two years from now.



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