Floyd Mayweather and his merry gang of global travellers will have to settle for the fakery of a Las Vegas pyramid, Eiffel Tower and a shrunken Bridge of Sighs as the fighter starts to plan for a ring return against Manny Pacquiao.
On Saturday night in front of 13,000 fans at the MGM in Las Vegas, a venue Mayweather has made his personal theatre, Pacquiao fought for the 70th time, easily beating Mayweather-clone Adrien Broner, to retain his WBA welterweight title. Pacquiao won comfortably, Broner once again lost with zero grace and insisted he had won easily.
It is likely that the win, impressive in bursts, will have influenced Mayweather to fight again and put a hold on his “extraordinary” life, which currently seems to feature him flying to exotic locations, his private jets brimming with grinning mannequins carrying his livery, counting his travelling stash of one-million dollars and searching for a watchmaker to make ever more zany diamond-crusted time pieces. The images of a topless Mayweather in Cairo on a camel still make me chuckle.
Pacquiao, now one of 24 serving senators in the Filipino government, talked all week in Las Vegas of getting Mayweather back in the ring and putting right the wrongs of their fight in May of 2015; Pacquiao injured a shoulder in the fight, which was five years too late in the making, and Mayweather easily won.
On Saturday night, as Broner was offering a desperate alternative view of history in one isolated corner of the ring, Pacquiao was asking for a rematch. Mayweather, the fight’s official promoter, was unmoved by the request. The play, when it happens, for the rematch will be an event, not an attachment to an ordinary night of boxing.
Mayweather’s man on earth is still Leonard Ellerbe, officially CEO of Mayweather Promotions, but in reality far more than just a boxing facilitator in the life of Mayweather. On Saturday night, Ellerbe was at his enigmatic best, dropping hints, mixed with denials and not revealing a single thing. “Floyd’s not interested in coming out of retirement,” he said, before adding: “Well, that’s my opinion.” Ellerbe would be a hopeless poker player.
It is obvious that Mayweather is very interested in coming out of retirement, Pacquiao is the only man he would fight and as the denials, the rejections and the silence surrounding a rematch increase, the fight will move closer and closer. Pacquiao beating Broner will not have influenced the deal - all he had to do was win.
On New Year’s Eve, in Tokyo, the Mayweather fleet arrived for a 139-second massacre of a tiny, unbeaten and petrified kid of 20 called Tenshin Nasukawa. Mayweather made a guarantee of nine-million dollars for destroying the kick boxer. Pacquiao and Mayweather chatted in Japan, sources close enough to listen insist a deal was done and secretly the inevitable rematch moved a bit closer.
Mayweather has made just under a billion dollars from his career in the ring, is unbeaten now in 50 fights and last fought an official boxing match in the summer of 2017 when he beat UFC fighter Conor McGregor in what was the Dubliner’s professional debut; the lunatic fight was fun, generated a tiny fortune, but was just shy of the record figures Mayweather and Pacquiao shared.
The Mayweather and Pacquiao fight came close to making 600 million dollars in total revenue, with Floyd - often called Money - putting about 200 million of it in his pocket. His share of the McGregor fight was more, coming in somewhere near 285 million dollars.
It is under a canopy of such extreme riches that a rematch between Mayweather and Pacquiao will be constructed. It is irrelevant that the pair are no longer the best two at their weight, at their peaks or much in demand. A second fight will arrive with several boxing promises, mostly false, but with enough sense at their core to start the endless debate; can a fully-fit Pacquiao, with two working shoulders, beat Mayweather and will Mayweather’s lack of competitive action diminish his hopes?
Nobody with any sense will be arguing that Errol Spence and Terrence Crawford, the best welterweights in the world, would beat the ancient pair of millionaires: Mayweather against Pacquiao is not that type of fight, it’s an event with enough storylines to infuriate the purists and sucker the curious.
On Saturday there were moments when Pacquiao was sharp, fast, knowing and worked his feet and hands in wonderful tandem; it was vintage Pacquiao, the type of Pacquiao that could beat Mayweather. You see, it’s hard not like to a rematch between two veterans.
