Mayweather has to give sanctioning bodies a hint of future plans

By Boxing News - 09/21/2015 - Comments

Floyd MayweatherBy Allan Fox: If Floyd Mayweather Jr. wants to keep his WBA and WBC titles until next year, he’s probably going to need to give the WBA and WBC a heads up about what he plans on doing with his career. If Mayweather doesn’t tell them that he’s still trying to decide whether to come back or not in 2016, they could strip him of his titles.

Mayweather already lost his pound-for-pound title with Ring Magazine after he said he was retiring. They took Mayweather on his word and stripped him quickly of his P4P title, and that obviously was a huge blow for Mayweather.

Mayweather hasn’t officially given up his titles in the 147 and 154lb divisions as of yet, and this suggests that he’s still thinking of coming back in 2016. Perhaps Mayweather never had any true plans of retiring at all? Who knows? It could have been just a gimmick that Mayweather used to get people to purchase his mismatch against Andre Berto on September 12th.

By saying that it was his last fight of his career instead of just him looking to win his 49th fight, Mayweather might have been hoping that fans would still purchase the fight on Showtime PPV despite it being a less than appealing match-up on paper. Judging by the estimates of the PPV buys the Mayweather-Berto fight generates, which is said to be 400,000 to 550,000, it doesn’t look like it worked out too well.

Perhaps some boxing fans did purchase the fight just because they thought it was going to be Mayweather’s last one of his career, but there weren’t enough of those fans to make it a huge success. It’s unknown what the break-even number is for Showtime/CBS for the Mayweather-Berto fight in terms of PPV buys, but it wouldn’t be surprising if Showtime/CBS lost money on the fight due to the potential low number of PPV buys.

Mayweather might want to come back and look for win No.50 next year, and a possible second fight with Manny Pacquiao. There will be a lot fewer boxing fans willing to buy a second fight between them given how poor their first fight was, and how dull Mayweather’s fight against Berto ended up being. But there would still be enough fans that would be willing to purchase a second fight for it to be worth it for Mayweather to take this fight.

Mayweather will lose out on a lot of PPV money if his fight against Berto only generates between 400,000 and 550,000 PPV buys. Mayweather could make that money back and then some if he chooses Pacquiao to fight in 2016 rather than someone like Miguel Cotto, Saul “Canelo” Alvarez, Amir Khan, Shawn Porter, Kell Brook or Danny Garcia. The smart thing for Mayweather to do would be for him to fight Pacquiao, but Mayweather is unpredictable right now after his blunder in selecting Berto.

That could be a sign that Mayweather won’t be taking any more chances by facing quality opposition. He could select someone like Karim Mayfield and look to get one of the cable giants like Showtime or HBO to give him a huge $30 million+ of guarantee money. However, after the Mayweather-Berto fight, I doubt either of the cable companies would give Mayweather a deal where he gets to be the one to hand pick his opponents like Showtime/CBS did.



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