Lampley doubts Mayweather will fight Pacquaio before his current contract with Showtime is up

By Boxing News - 09/17/2014 - Comments

floyd7344By Chris Williams: HBO’s Jim Lampley came down hard on WBA/WBC welterweight champion Floyd Mayweather Jr last night in his program ‘The Fight Game with Jim Lampley’ on HBO, saying that he doubts that Mayweather will agree to fight WBO 147 pound champion Manny Pacquiao before his current 6-fight contract expires in late 2015.

Lampley believes that if a fight does take place between Mayweather and Pacquiao, it’ll happen in fight number 50 for Mayweather, if then.

“Floyd Mayweather long ago made clear that he isn’t trying to please the entire available audience, and through the concentrated money harvest of pay-per-view distribution, he has convincingly established that he can do it his way, generate a kind of appeal not all of us will ever understand, and attract an income that out-distances those of polite golfers and friendly, smiling auto racers. Some would say, ‘more power to him.’

“But if the goal is to push the limits of public taste to the point where the overwhelming preponderance of consumers simply wash their hands and want nothing to do with him or his fights, his blithe comment to the effect that the NFL was over-reacting to a videotape by suspending Ray Rice was probably a pretty good start. And his garbled apology did little to remove the stench.

“This was the absolute height of heaving a rock out of a glass house. And if he honestly thinks that he can offer that kind of love to Rice without offending significant numbers of fans and observers, he’s wrong. The fact is, unbeaten record or not, consummate skill, notwithstanding. If you think he [Mayweather] will be seeking the spectrum of entertaining risk in fights 48 and 49, you may be dreaming. Manny Pacquiao, our guess, is not until fight number 50, if ever. Maybe never.”

I believe that Lampley is dead wrong about Mayweather not seeking risk in fights number 48 and 49, because Mayweather has been seeking risk all along. He’s taken on and beaten the likes of Saul “Canelo” Alvarez, Miguel Cotto, Marcos Maidana and Robert Guerrero. Those are incredibly risky opponents.

Mayweather has already beaten Juan Manuel Marquez, a fighter that Pacquiao has arguably lost to 4 times during his career. Who else is there for Mayweather to fight that he should be fighting?

If you compare the guys that Mayweather has fought to the guys that Pacquiao has fought in the last three years, Mayweather comes way out ahead. Here are the guys that Pacquiao has fought in the last three years: Tim Bradley, Marquez, Brandon Rios and Shane Mosley. Soon you’ll be able to add Chris Algieri to that list. But those guys don’t compare to the fighters that Mayweather has fought in my view. Cotto, Canelo, Maidana and Guerrero are ahead of the bunch that Pacquiao has fought by a considerable margin.

“He [Mayweather] said last week that he’ll retire from the ring after his completion of his 6-fight contract,” Lampley said. “It won’t happen, but if it did, no damage would be accrued to boxing. The fact is for the betterment of boxing’s image, Floyd Mayweather’s retirement can’t come a moment too soon.”

Wow, Lampley was really going overboard with that comment. You have to wonder whether he would have made the same remarks if Mayweather was under contract with HBO rather than Showtime.
I personally feel that when Mayweather retires, it’s going to leave a huge vacuum for a long, long time without anyone being able to step up and take over what Mayweather had accomplished in attracting boxing fans to the sport. It’ll be like after Muhammad Ali retired. There was a huge empty space left in the heavyweight division that stayed that way until Mike Tyson emerged many years later.



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