By Allan Fox: Floyd Mayweather Jr. let the boxing world know last Saturday that he has $80 million worth of exhibition matches that are on the table for him just waiting for him to setup. But as far as boxing matches aganist world world class boxers, it appears that Floyd is done in that area.
Mayweather has shown no interest in getting back in the ring to fight a rematch against Manny Pacquiao, which would arguably be his safest fight against a world class guy. Pacquiao is 40-years-old, small, and not someone that would be much of a threat to punching Mayweather’s lights out the way that welterweight champions Errol Spence, Keith Thurman, Terence Crawford and Shawn Porter all would. There’s going to be a point in the future where the boxing fans stop paying to see Mayweather fight these exhibitions. The question will Mayweather be still willing to fight the exhibitions if he’s only making thousands of dollars instead of millions?
“You know what’s crazy?” Mayweather said. “The exhibition [fight with 20-year-old Japanese kickboxer Tenshin Nasukawa] was supposed to be $9 million, but I ended up making $10 million. Am I having more exhibitions? Probably so. Most likely, yeah. I got about $80 million on the table worth of exhibitions,” Mayweather said.
You can blame these looming exhibition matches on why the rematch between Mayweather and Manny Pacquiao still hasn’t taken place. Mayweather could still make more money in a single fight with Pacquiao (61-7-2, 39 KOs), but the exhibition matches are super easy for Floyd, with no potential threat of him being beaten or hurt. Pacquiao is still a hard fight for Mayweather, especially with him having been put of the ring since 2015 in terms of fights against professional boxers, and not MMA guys like Conor McGregor and Tenshin Nasukawa. Mayweather doesn’t have to train hard for the exhibition matches. It’s easy work for Mayweather. He could beat those guys even if he were totally out of shape. Against Pacquiao or another professional fighter, Mayweather would have to put in a lot of work in training camp to get the rust out, and he still might lose. His hand speed seems to have disappeared on him since his last true fight in 2015. Without speed, Mayweather would be a sitting duck against Pacquiao or any professional fighter at this point.
Here’s Mayweather showing off his gold chains and bracelets this week on Instagram:
For some boxing fans, Mayweather is like a bad dream. A fighter that had a career’s worth of carefully picked out opponents, and then when he finally retires, he chooses to fight exhibition matches against over-matched MMA fighters one after another, and the fights bring in huge money and create tons of publicity but very little entertainment. It would be nice if the fights were at least competitive and entertaining, but thus far, they haven’t. Mayweather toyed with UFC star Conor McGregor in beating him by a 10th round knockout in 2017. Mayweather fought like he was in first gear the entire fight, taking it easy on McGregor and seemingly carrying him.
One of Mayweather’s against an MMA fighter was actually sanctioned as a professional boxing match by the Nevada State Athletic Commission. Talk about embarrassing. It would have been even worse if Mayweather’s recent fight with Tenshin Nasukawa was sanctioned as a professional fight.
Boxing great Muhammad Ali had exhibitions during his career, but he didn’t choose to have them one after another. When Ali retired, he didn’t go the exhibition route that Mayweather is. What’s troubling to some boxing fans is Mayweahther is now talking about having one of his popular fighters WBA Super World super featherweight champion Gervonta ‘Tank’ Davis also take part in exhibition matches, even though he’s an active fighter, and not a huge popular guy as of yet. Gervonta is just starting out, and he’s not been very active as of late. Mayweather dragging Gervonta into exhibition matches as well is seen by some as a move that could hurt his career. Mayweather wants to put Gervonta in with Tenshin Nasukawa as well. Why Mayweather feels it’s necessary for Tank Davis to fight an exhibition against the same guy that he thrashed just two months ago is the big question.
It would seem like the wiser thing for Mayweather to make Tank Davis look like a credible fighter by putting him in real boxing matches against the best fighters instead of putting him in exhibition matches and/or matching him against faded guys like Abner Mares or Hugo Ruiz.
After his recent exhibition fight against 20-year-old Japanese kickboxer Tenshin Nasukawa on December 31, the 42-year-old Mayweather isn’t done with the exhibition matches. Mayweather isn’t saying how many exhibition fights he’s coming down the pike, but it’s got to be more than a handful for him to be getting $80 million. Mayweather had Tenshin in tears after knocking him down three times in the process of stopping him in the 1st round in their exhibition match last December. That was the first ever boxing match for the young Tenshin, and it wasn’t surprising that he was knocked out. That fight was so embarrassingly one-sided that one couldn’t help but feel sorry for the young 20-year-old Tenshin. To have him inside the ring with a former world champion, it looked bad, really bad. There was nothing sporting about that fight.
Mayweather’s exhibition matches are no risk fights for him, since he’s facing non-boxers. It would be one thing if Mayweather were to have an exhibition match against someone that could potentially knock his block off like Gennady Golovkin. A lot of boxing fans would love to see an exhibition match of 12 rounds between Mayweather and GGG. That would be fun to watch, wouldn’t it? It might even bring in some PPV money if they wanted to take it down that route. That’s obviously not going to happen, because Golovkin is a real boxer, and he would have an excellent chance of planting Mayweather into the canvas once he caught up to him at some point in the fight.
If the average boxing fan could make the same kind of money Mayweather is getting for his exhibition matches, they would probably do the same thing. If there are people out there in the world that are willing to pay to see Mayweather fight MMA fighters with no boxing experience, then that’s on them. Fans can do what they want with their money. It kind of makes boxing into a joke, you can argue, when you see fighters doing exhibition matches, and receiving a lot of publicity for them.
Mayweather continuing with the exhibition matches begs the question of whether his high-spending lifestyle is putting a serious drain on his cash flow. Gambling, purchasing expensive jewelry and cars, that can’t be resold for the same value they were purchased at, could potentially be depleting Mayweather’s fortune. If Mayweather is flying through his fortune at a rapid pace, he might need these exhibition matches to keep him from going broke. It’s hard to know how much money Mayweather has, and how quickly he’s burning through it with his daily expenditures. But it’s easy to believe that there will come a point in the future where he goes broke if his spending gets out of control. If at that point in Mayweather’s life, he’s no longer getting millions for his exhibition matches, it could be a huge lifestyle change for him when he goes back to living the way he did before he made his fortune.