floyd63 By Patrick White: Whom will Floyd Mayweather fight after he defeats Marcos Maidana in September — assuming that he will be victorious in that fight? The following is my assessment of this question.

Keith Thurman

Keith Thurman is, with regard to ability alone, a worthy opponent for Mayweather. He is clearly an extremely talented up-and-coming fighter with exceptional power, good boxing skills and un-parralleled self-belief and hunger. I haven’t watched many of Thurman’s fights or studied him in any great detail, but the only weakness in his game that I have noticed appears to be the fact that he leaves himself open to counter-punches when throwing combinations, possible a result of having such overwhelming power that at lower levels no boxer would have the skill or the chin to risk throwing punches with Thurman when he opens up.

Despite the fact that many serious boxing fans would welcome a Mayweather-Thurman fight — at least I assume they would — Thurman is not popular enough for Mayweather to risk fighting at this time. It is clear from his history of opponent selection (or non-selection, as the case may be) and from what Mayweather has said in various interviews, that Mayweather’s criterion for selecting a boxing opponent is: the most possible money for the least possible risk.

Shawn Porter

After losing to Kell Brook recently, Shawn Porter will not have a chance to fight Mayweather until he avenges that loss and/or achieves another impressive victory or series of victories.

Kell Brook

Kell Brook is, like Thurman, almost certainly not popular enough to make him a plausible candidate to fight Mayweather at the moment, despite having recently beaten Shawn Porter. This point was all but confirmed by Brook’s manager, Barry Hearn, who stated that.

Timothy Bradley

Timothy Bradley is an unlikely next opponent for Mayweather for two interlocking reasons: (1) he recently lost to Manny Pacquiao; and (2) he is promoted by Bob Arum. Selecting Bradley would mean that Mayweather would not be able to claim that he is selecting the best possible opponent, as Pacquiao beat Bradley, and he would not be able to justify not fighting Pacquiao on the grounds that he will not do business with Arum, as he has done in the past.

The only way I can see Mayweather getting around this problem would be to publicly declare that he was both willing to work with Arum and that he was interested in fighting Pacquiao, and then to sabotage the negotiations with Pacquiao and blame Pacquiao for the fight not happening. It will be interesting to see if he does this.

Juan Manuel Marquez

Mayweather completely out-boxed Marquez when they fought, and has openly bragged about that being one of his easiest fights. Marquez also lost to Bradley recently, so I don’t think there would be much public interest in that fight.

Robert Guerrero

Clearly not going to happen after Mayweather completely out-boxed him recently.

Devon Alexander

Alexander is nowhere near popular enough to fight Mayweather, despite his early promise.

Danny Garcia

This fight is possible given Garcia’s unbeaten record and growing popularity, but it seems extremely unlikely that Garcia — who is currently fighting at 140 — would choose to fight Mayweather in his first fight at 147, which would be necessary if he were to fight Mayweather immediately after the Maidana fight. I also think that Garcia wouldn’t have a chance against Mayweather given his speed and reach disadvantage and as such I consider it very unlikely that Golden Boy Promotions and Al Haymon, his promotional company and manager respectively, would choose to seriously damage Garcia’s promising career — a career that will extend well beyond the end of Mayweather’s — by feeding him to Mayweather. I have also noticed that Garcia does not seem too enthusiastic about fighting Mayweather when questioned about the subject.

Erislandy Lara

Not popular enough and was recently beaten by Saul Alvarez, albeit controversially.

Saul Alvarez

A re-match with Alvarez is possible but unlikely. Mayweather handily out-boxed Alvarez in their first encounter and Alvarez failed to comprehensively beat Lara in his most recent fight, although he still produced an impressive performance, in my opinion. These factors, I suspect, will mean that there is much less interest for the re-match than there was for the first fight.

There is also the problem of weight. Alvarez-Lara was fought at 155 pounds despite the fight being for the 154 pound championship, which is evidence that Alvarez is now struggling to make 154. Alvarez also looked very weight-drained at his weigh-in for his fight with Floyd Mayweather, which was contested at a weight of 152 pounds. I suspect that Mayweather would be unwilling to fight Alvarez at 154 or 155 — particularly given the weight disadvantage he had at 152 — and that Alvarez would be almost as unwilling to fight Mayweather at 152, particularly given the fact that it would probably be even harder for him to make that weight now he is older.

Alvarez also has the possibility of fighting Miguel Cotto next, which would be a very profitable and legacy-building fight for him, and one that would occur at a much more comfortable weight for him, probably somewhere between 155 and 160 pounds, given that Cotto holds a world title at 160 and Alvarez fought his last fight at 155, as previously mentioned.

Moreover, the very possibility of this fight means that Alvarez would be in a stronger position when negotiating the terms of a re-match with Mayweather and this would certainly make a Mayweather-Alvarez fight less profitable for Mayweather. Further, a re-match with Alvarez would probably be far more popular after the an Alvarez-Cotto fight, assuming the Mexican is victorious, and so it would be in Mayweather’s best interest to wait until after that fight before fighting Alvarez again.

Miguel Cotto

Miguel Cotto preformed very well against Mayweather and he is still a very popular pay-per-view star so there certainly is the possibility that Mayweather will fight him next. This fight suffers from the same problems as the Alvarez fight however: the fact that Cotto lost his first fight with Mayweather; is now fighting at 160; and has the possibility of very popular fight with Alvarez that, if he wins, would increase the popularity of a Mayweather re-match and therefore provide an incentive for Mayweather to delay the re-match until after Cotto-Alvarez.

Manny Pacquiao

Top Rank and Golden Boy Promotions — the two relevant promotional companies — are now purportedly working together and Mayweather made reference to a surprise opponent in 2015, so perhaps this fight will finally happen. I am extremely skeptical about this possibility however and suspect that even if both Mayweather and Pacquiao genuinely want to make this fight something would go wrong during the negotiations.

Amir Khan

In my opinion Amir Khan is by far the most likely next opponent for Mayweather. As I understand, he has a respectable fan-base, that includes Muslims from Europe, south Asian and the middle east, which would increase the pay-per-view audience because there would be a low degree of overlap between Mayweather and Khan’s respective fan-bases. Mayweather has also, I believe, expressed an interest in fighting in the United Kingdom, as he has many loyal fans there; and the enormous success that was Froch-Groves 2 at Wembley may further inspire Mayweather to fight Khan.

I also think that the likelihood of Khan beating Mayweather is extremely low. He has extremely impressive hand speed, but he doesn’t possess anything close to one-punch knockout power and has a very suspect chin — which is probably a result of his small head and thin neck. He is also extremely vulnerable to a left hook from an orthodox fighter. The punch most directly responsible for his loss to Garcia was a left hook and Diaz also knocked Khan down with a left hook. Mayweather posses an excellent lead left hook and I wouldn’t be surprised if he views a fight with Khan as an opportunity to score a spectacular knock-out victory in front of a large audience at Wembley.

Khan has also made it clear in many interviews that he is very interested in fighting Mayweather — some might say desperate — and this will place Mayweather in a strong negotiating position for the fight.