Floyd Mayweather can retire or fight, but there’s nothing left to prove

Watching Floyd Mayweather’s predictable clinical dissection of Andre Berto last night, something occurred to me: I’m really bored with Floyd Mayweather the fighter. None of what I’m going to say from here has anything to do with Floyd Mayweather the person, this is just about the man who steps into the ring in May and September for the last three years, who is now 49-0, still the pound-for-pound king, and insists this retirement (not his first) is the real deal.

If he’s retired, good. Not “good riddance,” just good. And I say that not because I dislike Mayweather. As a fighter, he’s a genius. The absolute best of his era, no question. A man who beat everyone in front of him and almost always did so convincingly, making some terrific fighters look average along the way.

The reason I’m bored with Floyd Mayweather is not because his fights are boring, per se. It’s because the reality is, he’s done what he’s always boasted about. He’s done it all in boxing. And there is no longer anything at all left to prove.

At 38, Mayweather can only stick around now with a few outcomes. He can win a couple more fights for a boatload of money to add to the several other boatloads he’s made in his career -- he says $700 million in career earnings. That’s what most people do expect, that he’ll return next year because someone, be it Showtime/CBS or HBO, will make him an offer he just can’t turn down, a chance to go to 50-0, a clean, round number that surpasses the legendary if honestly overrated 49-0 of Rocky Marciano that Floyd tied last night. His own ego might also give him the “itch” that fighters who retire speak of often, as well as his lifelong commitment to competition. Floyd’s been boxing his whole life. It’s not easy to leave something like that.

He could also stick around too long, lose to someone who’s not really on his level, and add pointless and empty tarnish to his in-ring legacy. We’ve seen many a fighter do this in their careers, including some of the greats. Roy Jones Jr, still fighting at age 46, is a prime recent example. Muhammad Ali, the most famous fighter of all time, stuck around too long, embarrassed in fights against Larry Holmes and Trevor Berbick in the early 1980s. Mike Tyson, once the scariest athlete on the planet, ended his career in 2004-05 with meek losses to Danny Williams and Kevin McBride, two guys he would have frozen with fear in his prime days.

A loss by Mayweather at this stage of his career wouldn’t mean a whole lot, other than he got old. It would still be a big deal, but it’s clear that he’s been better than the field throughout his career, from super featherweight to junior middleweight and all stops in between.

And who would he fight, anyway? Amir Khan desperately wants the bout, and his speed could indeed be a problem for Floyd, but Khan is also a fighter who has knockout losses to Breidis Prescott and Danny Garcia, plus a loss to Lamont Peterson. Is he the sort of fighter you need to see Mayweather face? Keith Thurman, a charismatic rising star in the welterweight division, is another guy who badly wants to fight Mayweather. But does he really possess the sort of talent that you think can overcome Floyd’s greatness?

It’s hard to figure any fight out there that is really attractive for Mayweather, unless you consider an absurd idea like him fighting at middleweight against Gennady Golovkin, which would just be silly. Mayweather’s not a middleweight, pushing his body to capacity to fight a few times at 154 pounds in his career against Oscar De La Hoya, Miguel Cotto, and Canelo Alvarez, three of his biggest wins. Asking Mayweather to fight Golovkin misunderstands why we have weight classes in the first place, and is just a way to demand that Mayweather lose a fight already.

A potential rematch with Manny Pacquiao would be big, though likely not even half as big as their first fight, a five-years-in-the-making in-ring dud in May of this year. It’s hard to imagine a modern version of Pacquiao, who has one foot in boxing and the other in Philippines politics, really testing Mayweather, no matter what issues there are with IVs or shoulder injuries.

Floyd Mayweather can fight on if he wants. Someone’s inevitably going to offer him a lot of money to do so. But the era of Mayweather as a can’t-miss star has come to a close, largely because he closed the era himself with his dominance. We’re at the point where he’s run out of fights that need to happen, and there aren’t even many that are interesting enough ideas to actively want. There’s nothing that Floyd Mayweather can do that he hasn’t already done, other than get old and lose to someone he would’ve given a boxing lesson to on an evening earlier in his career. There’s really not even much satisfaction to be had anymore if Mayweather loses, because it happening would clearly be more to do with his age than his talent.

Whether we like it or not, Floyd Mayweather has pretty much done what he always said he would do. He’s won. He’s won 49 times. 49 might be enough, and Mayweather might know that better than anyone.