Though talk of a possible Floyd Mayweather Junior-Manny Pacquiao rematch gathered pace this week, according to one man – Floyd’s right hand man, Leonard Ellerbe – it is mere talk and nothing more. In fact, in speaking with Kevin Iole of Yahoo! Sports, Ellerbe basically said there is nothing to talk about with regards to a possible Mayweather ring return.
“Floyd is retired and nothing has changed,” Ellerbe said flat-out. “There’s nothing else to talk about. He’s enjoying his life as a retired fighter and I’m focused on the company. There has been no talk, nothing, not a word, about Floyd coming back.”
Earlier this week plenty of web sites and publications ran with a story suggesting there might be a Mayweather-Pacquiao II, largely because Top Rank boss Bob Arum was quoted as saying the fight had a “better than 50-50 chance of happening.” And Showtime boss Stephen Espinoza spoke to Ring Magazine’s web site and said the sequel to “The Fight of The Century” could happen, “if the fans demanded it.”
But according to Ellerbe, arguably the one professional man who knows 39-year-old Mayweather best, there will be no such fight. Maybe, in light of how much of a tremendous letdown the May 2015 fight was, this is for the best. It’s not as if the very expensive combination of Mayweather and Pacquiao together in the ring resulted in a Hagler-Hearns type explosion, or a Leonard-Hearns classic. Far from it, and in light of how poor the heavily hyped and years in the making match-up proved to be, maybe it should be left where it is, in the past – and not brought back into significance by way of a rematch. Or a repeat, which, really, is all we would get to see if the two did fight again.
Mayweather, as he said himself, closed the book on that story with his emphatic points win. Yet still the non-story of a rematch has been given space.
Regarding what Mayweather WILL do next, he has said he will continue promoting, and that will now include promoting MMA, a move “Money” says he plans to make. Talking to FightHype.com, Mayweather said he knows boxing “wants me back, but I’m getting into MMA.”
It seems Mayweather is as far away from a boxing ring than he’s ever been.