Arum says Mayweather not planning ring return

By Boxing News - 07/20/2016 - Comments

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By Allan Fox: It doesn’t look like superstar Floyd Mayweather Jr. will be returning to the ring to face Manny Pacquiao anytime soon. According to Pacquiao’s promoter Bob Arum, he reached out to Mayweather’s adviser Al Haymon to see if Mayweather would be interested in returning to the ring. He was told that Mayweather is enjoying his retirement and has no plans on coming back.

“We talked about facing Mayweather this year with Pacquiao,” Arum said to RingTV.com about speaking to Haymon. “And Al said that Mayweather was enjoying his retirement and had no plans to go back into the ring.”

Mayweather was interested in coming back in 2016 for a fight against UFC fighter Conor McGregor, but that fight failed to take place after McGregor signed for a rematch with Nate Diaz. Besides that, McGregor wanted a 50-50 deal for a fight against Mayweather, and that would have prevented him from getting the nine-figure payday that he wants to return to the ring.

At this point, I don’t think Mayweather would get a nine-figure payday for a second fight against Pacquiao because there are a lot of angry boxing fans that wouldn’t want to pay to see a second fight between them after how poor their previous one was last year. Neither fighter did much of anything in the fight. Pacquiao disclosed after the fight that he had fought with an injured shoulder that he came into the fight with.

A lot of fans were irate to learn that Pacquiao had fought injured because fans had paid $100 to $110 to watch the fight on pay-per-view, and the fans that saw it live, paid a premium for the tickets, which where hiked through the roof. With a lot of fans still angry about their fight last year, I think there’s a good chance that a rematch between Mayweather and Pacquiao wouldn’t bring in a fraction of the PPV buys that their previous fight did. This means that a lot less money would be made. I’m not sure that one of the networks would be willing to give Mayweather a huge payday in terms of a contract.

Mayweather made a fortune from his six-fight contract with Showtime/CBS, and especially with his fight against Pacquiao. That was a huge windfall for Mayweather. While it’s possible that Mayweather could one day spend all of his money, it’s not likely to happen anytime soon. If Mayweather does go broke, it’s going to take a while for that to happen. He’ll likely be too old to fight if he does one day blow all his money.