By Brad Slotnick: Floyd Mayweather Jr isn’t sure whether he’ll continue doing exhibition bouts after his eight-round match against YouTuber Logan Paul last Sunday night. Mayweather (50-0, 27 KOs) took punishment against the much bigger 6’2″ Logan, and he didn’t seem happy about it.
When Mayweather was asked if he’d be willing to return to boxing, he said, “absolutely not,‘ he won’t be returning to face real boxers. As far as exhibition bouts, Mayweather, 44, wasn’t ready to rule those out. He said, “probably not.”
The way Mayweather looked against Logan, no one is suggesting that he return to resume his boxing career against top welterweights like Errol Spence Jr or Terence Crawford.
Mayweather showed against Logan that his physical skills are gone, and all he has left is his knowledge of the game.
It’s fair to say that Floyd is like an old car with 300,000 miles on it. You can’t take that car on a long road trip without it potentially falling apart. Mayweather cannot take on a top fighter in the sport now because he’s too old and feeble.
At this point, the only thing Mayweather is capable of doing is fighting exhibitions.
Will Mayweather duck Jake Paul?
If Mayweather elects not to fight any more exhibition matches, boxing fans will assume he’s afraid of fighting Logan’s brother Jake Paul, who is a knockout threat.
Mayweather is already hinting that he wants no part of Jake by his uncertainty about continuing with the exhibition matches.
He knows obviously that the boxing public will expect him to fight Jake next, and if he does that, he could get smashed the way Ben Askren did.
Jake punches harder with both hands, and he’s a natural-born counter puncher. More importantly, Jake hasn’t shown signs of having stamina problems like Logan.
Mayweather can’t count on Jake gassing out after two rounds as he did with Logan, and that could bad news if he doesn’t.
“And I’m not coming back to the sport of boxing, absolutely not,” said Mayweather. “I did what I had to do, I made my mark on the sport. As far as me doing another exhibition, probably not,” said Mayweather.
“I got all my faculties, made a ton of money. Hey, money ain’t everything. Well, I know we got to eat food every day to survive so we can live longer, and that takes money.
Mayweather thinks he could have stopped Logan
“I could have pressed real, real hard and thrown some crazy combinations,” said Mayweather on whether he could have stopped Logan Paul. “His goal was to survive and that was a win for him.”
It’s doubtful that Mayweather could have thrown enough punches to score a knockout of Logan. For one, Mayweather looked badly fatigued each time he threw more than a couple of punches in a row.
Secondly, the way that Logan was tying him up constantly, Mayweather wouldn’t have been able to get enough shots off without being wrapped in a bearhug to shut him down.