Floyd Mayweather posted to his Instagram this week that he was coming out of retirement in 2020.
There’s nothing in there about who he will be fighting or when, though Michael Rosenthal over at Boxing Junkie floated the idea that perhaps he and Dana White could organize another exhibition against a UFC fighter a la his fight with Conor McGregor.
Maybe they’ll dust off Manny Pacquiao and let the two of them go at it for nostalgia purposes.
Whatever it is: Boxing fans, you don’t have to do this anymore.
You don’t have to talk yourself into watching this. You don’t have to convince yourself that watching a 42-year-old Mayweather dodge punches and do enough to win on the scorecard is entertaining, especially if he’s going up against a UFC fighter with an iota of the technical skill he has.
Mayweather was one of the best to ever do it, and in his prime, watching him was thrilling. He was so technically gifted, and so quick, that watching great fighters try to hit him was to see them rendered useless. It was an acquired taste, but once you saw his brilliance, it became hard not to want to see him work.
Now? I mean, what are we watching? The McGregor fight had a certain sideshow appeal, and it was funny watching Mayweather try to figure out what to do with McGregor’s undeveloped style, but come on. At a certain point, watching an aging man dodge punches isn’t all that thrilling anymore. It becomes rote.
Not to mention he’s a reprehensible person, an annoyance, and is starting to get to the point where boxing is struggling to move on from him. Every time he comes around it’s another media circus that sucks oxygen out of the room that other young boxers might consume.
I realize the central irony in the fact that I’m writing about him right now, and making an argument by giving coverage to someone I’m saying shouldn’t get coverage. But let this be the end of it. Let us move on from this.
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[opinary poll=”will-you-pay-to-watch-the-next-floyd-may” customer=”forthewin”]