By Allan Fox: Floyd Mayweather Jr. reacted as many expected him to last Saturday following Conor McGregor‘s 1st round stoppage win over a badly over-matched Donald Cerrone at UFC 246 by posting fight posters of him and Conor and Khabib Nurmagomedov.
If Mayweather faces McGregor or Nurmagomedov in 2020, it would be his third straight fight against an MMA fighter. In Mayweather’s last two fights, he’s beaten McGregor and Tenshin Nasukawa.
It’s believed that Mayweather’s first fight of 2020 will be against an MMA, and his second will be him against a boxer. 41-year-old Manny Pacquiao is the guy that Mayweather is expected to face in the second half of 2020.
Floyd and Dana White will be working together
Mayweather will be working with UFC president Dana White when he comes out of retirement this year. Boxing fans want to see Mayweather fight Canelo Alvarez in a rematch, but it appears he has no interest in that fight. Instead, Mayweather is expected to fight more MMA guys in non-competitive boxing events.
Those are presumably the fights that Mayweather will be coming out of retirement for in 2020. In other words, Mayweather is interested in facing MMA guys in boxing events in hopes that fans will continue to want to see these type of ‘fights’ rather than him facing boxers.
The fight poster Floyd posted involving McGregor on his Instagram last Saturday said this: ‘Mayweather-McGregor 2 2020.’ It was just a big hint by Mayweather to let fans know that this is one of two possible fights for him to be returning to the ring for this year. The other one is Mayweather vs. Nurmagomedov. Mayweather posted a similar poster on his Instagram involving that UFC fighter. It’s titled: ‘Mayweather-Nurmagomedov 2020’
Mayweather will be turning 43-years-old next month on February 24, and he’s career alive by fighting MMA guys instead of boxers inside the ring. The last time Mayweather fought a real boxer was his fight against a passed his best Andre Berto on September 12, 2015.
After that fight, Mayweather retired, and didn’t fight again until his match against McGregor on August 26, 2017. The Nevada State Athletic Commission sanctioned the Mayweather-McGregor fight as a professional match, even though McGregor was making his pro debut at the time.
Floyd keeping his career going
It’s disappointing to a lot of people the way that Mayweather, one of the greatest boxers of all time, is now putting together fights against MMA guys that don’t come from a boxing background.
These fights obviously wouldn’t happen if not for people being willing to pay to see Mayweather against these types of fighters. They’re keeping Mayweather going by buying his mismatches against guys like McGregor. Without the fans buying into these farces, Mayweather would likely not bother fighting guys like McGregor, Tenshin and Nurmagomedov.
Mayweather vs. Manny Pacquiao 2 possible in 2020
A second fight between Mayweather and Pacquiao is a strong possibility this year after Floyd faces another UFC guy first. Mayweather defeated Pacquiao by a close 12 round decision in the ‘Fight of the Century’ in 2015. Unfortunately, it was a boring match with Mayweather playing it safe, jabbing and moving to keep from getting hit.
Pacquiao had a shoulder injury, and he wasn’t able to attack Mayweather the way he needed to for him to win. Nevertheless, it was still a close fight. Despite the previous Mayweather-Pacquiao super-bout being a major disappointment for fans, there’s still a high degree of interest from people in seeing those two face each other again.
Pacquiao has been looking good lately, beating Keith Thurman, Adrien Broner and Lucas Matthysse in his last three fights. The popular Filipino superstar Pacquiao is interested in facing Errol Spence Jr. and Mikey Garcia in 2020.
Pacquiao would be a tough fight for Mayweather
At this point, Mayweather will have a lot of problems against Pacquiao, who is still fighting at a high level despite his advanced age. Without some kind of handicap for Mayweather, he’s likely to suffer his first career defeat. For that reason, there’s a big question mark whether Mayweather will take the rematch with the Filipino star.
On one hand, Mayweather will make a lot of money fighting a second fight with Manny. But on the downside, Mayweather is likely to lose to Pacquiao, because he’s been retired for all intents and purposes since 2015. Mayweather looked slow, lethargic and old in his fights with McGregor and Tenshin.
It’s not surprising that Mayweather’s skills have deteriorated. He hasn’t been fighting, and he’s been living the life of a super rich person. Yeah, Mayweather is doing a good job scraping together fights for paydays against MMA guys, but these guys kind of matches are no preparation for fighting an elite level boxer.
You can’t count Mayweather’s fights against MMA guys as him staying sharp in terms of his boxing ability. The MMA guys that Mayweather has been fighting would likely lose to even journeymen level boxers. McGregor looked awful in his fight with Mayweather in 2017, and the Japanese kickboxer Tenshin Nasukawa was completely inside the ring against Floyd in 2018.
View this post on Instagram