By Eris Baldwin: If Floyd Mayweather Jr. chooses to return to the ring in 2017 to fight a rematch against Manny Pacquiao, their fight will likely be a lot bigger than the middleweight match-up between champion Gennady “GGG” Golovkin and Mexican star Saul “Canelo” Alvarez, It doesn’t matter that Mayweather and Pacquiao have lost a few steps each and are no longer the fighters they once were, they’re still a lot more recognizable names in the sport than Canelo and Golovkin.
Golden Boy is proclaiming that Canelo is the biggest pay-per-view attraction in boxing right now, and they may be right, but he’s failed to become the same type of PPV attraction that Mayweather and Pacquiao were in the height of their fame.
One reason for that is because Golden Boy’s careful match-making of Canelo has kept him from becoming a crossover star. Mayweather and Pacquiao are more recognizable names in the U.S than Canelo and Golovkin. A rematch between Mayweather and Pacquiao would still likely bring in WAY more pay-per-view buys than a fight between Canelo and Golovkin.
Mayweather showed up at Pacquiao’s fight against WBO welterweight champion Jessie Vargas last Saturday night, and the boxing fans have speculating ever since whether he’ll be returning to the ring to fight Pacquiao. Top Rank promoter Bob Arum says it’s not happening. Of course, you never know. Mayweather might come back for the right amount of money. It might have been better if Arum matched Pacquiao against a better fighter than Vargas though, because there’s no real motivation for Mayweather to come back to fight Pacquiao again off of the back of a mismatch like that.
“It’s good for banter. It’s good for headlines, but I’m not going to read too much into it,” said Top Rank president Todd DuBoef said to the latimes.com about a potential fight between Mayweather vs. Pacquiao.
If Mayweather does come out of retirement to fight Pacquiao next year, then there’s no way that a fight between Golovkin and Canelo will do anywhere near as many buys. If Mayweather and Pacquiao decide to take the Mexican Independence Day holiday in September, then there’s not much that Canelo and Golovkin will be able to do about it other than move off the date. Canelo sees those dates as his own, but he wouldn’t be in the position to kick Mayweather and Pacquiao off that date, even if it takes place on Showtime pay-per-view rather than on HBO PPV.
“I thought Manny performed extraordinarily well,” said promoter Bob Arum to the latime.com. “When he’s moving and punching like that, when he disappears around a guy and comes out on the other side throwing punches — that’s great craftsmanship.”
Pacquiao did not look that good in beating Vargas. He won the fight, but he didn’t throw a lot of punches, and he seems to be only capable of throwing a handful of shots before backing away to either rest or wait for another opening. The problem was Pacquiao was waiting long periods of time between each attack, and his low work rate made the fight more competitive than the fight should have been.
“We had a surprise visitor and he had a number of things to say that became part of the [pay-per-view] broadcast,” Arum said about Mayweather. “But Floyd is retired as far as we’re concerned, and I respect that.”
At this point it remains to be seen whether Golovkin and Canelo will even fight each other in 2017. With the way that the two sides seem to be entrenched when it come sot the financial picture of the fight, we might not see them fighting in 2017.