By Chris Williams: Manny Pacquiao fans better drink up as much as they can with watching Floyd Mayweather Jr. perform this Saturday night because he’s not going to be around much longer. Mayweather says he’ll be retiring after his last fight with Showtime/CBS next September, and as I already pointed out, Mayweather won’t be throwing another bone to Pacquiao by fighting him again.
Pacquiao will get a big paycheck by fighting Mayweather this Saturday on Showtime/HBO PPV, at 9 ET at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nevada. But this unfortunately is going to be the only chance Pacquiao gets for the fight with Floyd, because he’s going to be looking in another direction for his September fight.
“My father is right. September, you know, I think will be my last fight,” Mayweather said to the media on Tuesday during his Grand arrival at the MGM in Las Vegas, Nevada. “I’m close to that big 40. I look at things totally different. It’s about that time for me to walk away. We’ll have to see how everything plays out Saturday. I don’t have anything negative to say. My father is entitled to his own opinion, but when it’s all said and done I’m my own man.”
Mayweather doesn’t want to be one of those many fighters that sticks around way too long and winds up becoming just a name that younger fighters use to get attention for themselves. We’ve seen that happen way too often to guys like Shane Mosley and Oscar De La Hoya, for example. Who would have ever thought that those guys would have stuck around the sport long enough to where they were beaten again and again late in their careers.
If Mayweather does continue fighting beyond September, you had better believe it’ll be to fight someone good with an unbeaten record and perhaps a world title in their possession. Fighting Pacquiao again would be going over old ground for Mayweather, and he doesn’t want to do that again. He recently gave Marcos Maidana a rematch last September, and it wasn’t nearly as interesting seeing the two fighters face each other than it was the first time around. That’s why it’s better for fighters to move on rather than get stuck in a never-ending rematch cycle where they just keep fighting each other repeatedly. If Juan Manuel Marquez hadn’t stepped off the rematch cycle against Pacquiao after their fourth and final fight in 2012, one can only imagine how many more times that Pacquiao’s promoter Bob Arum would have matched them up by now. My guess is at least two more times to make is six fights altogether.
With Mayweather saying ‘no rematch for the 36-year-old Filipino fighter, Pacquiao is going to have a lot of pressure on him in this fight on Saturday to win the fight. If he doesn’t get the victory against Mayweather, then that’s probably it. Pacquiao will have to live with the defeat in the same way he had to live with his defeat at the hands of Marquez. But it goes both ways. If Mayweather loses, he’d have to live with the defeat as well unless he decided to change his mind and fight Pacquiao a second time. I think Mayweather is done with dealing with Pacquiao, his promoter Bob Arum, trainer Freddie Roach and personal assistant Michael Koncz. I don’t think Mayweather wants to deal with them again after this fight.
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