By Michael Collins: Floyd Mayweather Jr. says his number #1 choice of an opponent for his next fight is still WBO welterweight champion Manny Pacquiao. However, that’s likely not going to happen, especially with Pacquiao’s promoter Bob Arum saying on Wednesday that his fighter can’t fight until the end of May at the earliest due to need to maximize revenue by having an outdoor 38,000 seat arena constructed for the fight.
Arum doesn’t want to throw money away by having Pacquiao fight Mayweather in the much smaller MGM Grand in Vegas.
Mayweather now has to look for an opponent to fight him on May 5th. He’s already ruled out Saul Alvarez and Robert Guerrero. One fighter that Mayweather is interested in fighting is Sergio Martinez, a former two division world champion and the fighter that many boxing fans see as the top middleweight in the division. Mayweather says he’d fight Martinez if he’ll agree to fight at 150 pounds.
Mayweather said this in an interview with Kevin Iole at Yahoo.com “If Sergio Martinez can make 150, let’s make it happen.”
That might be the best possible choice for Mayweather unless he’s interested in facing some of the welterweights like Devon Alexander, Andre Berto or Kell Brook. A fight with Berto would be an interesting fight but Berto is fighting a rematch with Victor Ortiz next month on February 11th and Berto could end up losing to Ortiz again.
Martinez has a fight coming up on March 17th against Matthew Macklin in New York. That’s considered a very winnable fight for Martinez and it’s likely he’ll get past Macklin without any problem. However, it will only leave Martinez less than two months to get ready for a Mayweather fight. I’m sure he can it physically but if he suffers a cut in the Macklin fight, it will make it impossible to be healed up enough to fight Mayweather on May 5th.