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Home » Mayweather’s mantle: Floyd still number one – even in retirement

Mayweather’s mantle: Floyd still number one – even in retirement

Despite plenty of excitement to be had in match-ups involving the current top stars in boxing, none of them have the pulling power of Floyd Mayweather Jr. and let’s be honest, nobody even comes close.

Roman Gonzalez has been handed the daunting job of taking over at the top, although there are a lot of sceptics and a big proportion of those believe the Nicaraguan didn’t even do enough to win his last fight against Carlos Cuadras.

At number two is Gennady Golovkin, a massive puncher who has been accused of staying too much within his comfort zone. ‘GGG’ is hell-bent on unifying the middleweight division completely, but some say would no wonder – as the Kazakh puncher is miles ahead of anybody at the weight.

Golovkin’s only hope of making it to P4P king status and potentially becoming a pay-per-view star is to move up in weight and begin dominating at 168 and eventually 175 over the next couple of years. As it stands, the 35 year-old is running out of time and potentially wasting the most lucrative spell of his career chasing a fight with Canelo Alvarez.

Granted Golovkin will make a tidy sum from a fight opposite the Mexican superstar, but the amount of time it takes for him to land the clash could have seen him make double that amount before then against the right opposition.

Beyond those two, there’s a hefty match-up- between Sergey Kovalev and former super-middleweight star Andre Ward, a collision that will potentially herald the dawn of a new era in boxing. Kovalev or Ward will wake up on November 20 as the best in the world, but even then would be overshadowed should Mayweather decide to lace up his gloves again.

Mayweather’s former foes Canelo and Pacquiao have been stunted in their pursuit of the top spot, simply through taking a fight with the ‘Money’ man at the wrong time and still have plenty to do if they want to convince the fans otherwise.

Too many of today’s major players are trying to have too much control over their own careers, perhaps wrongly taking a leaf out of Mayweather’s book, without actually talking enough scalps to command such a role.

The fact is, Mayweather beat everybody from 1998 when he picked up his first world title, something that cannot be matched by the pretenders to the throne who continue to stall on making the fights everybody wants to see.

Mayweather v Pacquiao took a long time to make, plainly due to egos and making the fight as lucrative as possible, whilst Floyd’s resume reads like a who’s who of the last twenty years and may never be matched again in the future.