MAYWEATHER RETIRES?
MAYWEATHER RETIRES
Friday, June 6, 2008 5:00 PM
Dear Media:
It is with a heavy heart that I write you this message today. I have decided to permanently retire from boxing. This decision was not an easy one for me to make as boxing is all I have done since I was a child. However, these past few years have been extremely difficult for me to find the desire and joy to continue in the sport.
I have said numerous times and after several of my fights over the past two years that I might not fight again. At the same time, I loved competing and winning and also wanted to continue my career for the fans, knowing they were there for me and enjoyed watching me fight. However, after many sleepless nights and intense soul-searching I realized I could no longer base my decision on anything but my own personal happiness, which I no longer could find. So I have finally made up my mind, spoken to my family, particularly my mother, and made my decision.
I am sorry I have to leave the sport at this time, knowing I still have my God-given abilities to succeed and future multi-million dollar paydays ahead, including the one right around the corner. But there comes a time when money doesn't matter. I just can't do it anymore. I have found a peace with my decision that I have not felt in a long time.
Finally, I want to personally thank all of my fans for their loyalty and dedication as my career comes to a close. I always believed that their enthusiasm and support helped carry me to victory with every fight I ever had.
It was a great joy to have fought for all of you. Now I hope you understand my decision and wish me well with the rest of my life.
Floyd Mayweather Jr.
Labels: boxing, Boxing Standard, Floyd Mayweather
posted by Eddie Goldman @ 5:28 AM
13 comments
13 Comments:
We should have a pool for how long this retirement lasts.
Or which comes first:
1 -- Larry Holmes vs. George Foreman.
2 -- Evander Holyfield vs. Mike Tyson 3.
3 -- The crowning of an undisputed heavyweight champion of the world.
4 -- Floyd's "comeback".
It may well be legitimate. I hope it is. Someone needs to show that it's theoretically possible for a fighter to retire at the top of his game, keep the money, and then refrain from coming back. The retirement statement was funny though: it suggested a kind of clambering on the part of the press and public that has never really existed. Has there ever been a bigger "who cares?" superstar?
I guess I'm willing to see it as legitimate--at least in the sense that right now he means it. But I haven't changed in the expectation that we'll see him in the ring well past his prime, into his forties, and that he'll be more interesting then--winning some and losing some--than he is now in his cozy, highly branded undefeated state. Boxing is what he knows how to do, and I don't think he's going to find any particular satisfaction or success in trying to be a full-time "entertainer" beyond the ring or a behind-the-scenes player in the business of entertainment. He's a boxer, so I expect him to box again, even if I'd actually like to see him confound expectation and stay retired.
But Charles is right to point out that this retirement, whether genuine or temporary, really doesn't move anybody much. A big earner is stepping away from the fight scene, but it's not like a generational icon is taking our hopes and dreams with him when he goes. I appreciate Mayweather; I like his technical competence and I'm mildly interested in what happens to him; I wish him well, as he asks us to do in his letter; but I can't say that I've invested any special meaning in him, and I never really got the sense that anybody else did either. It seems harsh to say that nobody really cares that much whether he retires or not, but, outside of a few potential opponents and TV executives who stand to miss some paydays, I don't think anybody really does care very much.
That's actually a reason why I hope Mayweather stays retired. If he comes back and stays too long and gets hammered a few times, fight fans in their blood-loving perversity are going to start liking him a lot more, even rooting passionately for him, and that will tempt him to keep going, and the circular logic of exciting decline will kick in, and then, as happens to everybody sooner or later, he's going to get hurt. I'm not eager to see that old story play out again.
Carlo, I agree that the awful boxing rite of passage--the warrior in decline finally showing his character through stoically taking a prolonged beating from a champion in his prime, and thus establishing himself as a man worthy of our respect and even love--is for the fucking birds. It's a pathology that has never been properly analyzed in the kind of withering way that it deserves to be. What is inherently noble about a forty year old man getting beaten up by a professional prize fighter? And, with very few exceptions, everyone past a certain age becomes just a man past a certain age (even as he steps into the ring) and ceases to be a professional prize fighter.
Look at the two extreme models out there: Ali and Marciano. Ali collects love in heaping bushels to this day, and most of it proceeds not from his unhittable youth but from the contrast between that youth and the beatings he took like a man in his declining years. Losses and damage equal love. De La Hoya seems to be pursuing a similar but less damage-intensive strategy: lose fights, win love. On the other hand, Marciano walked and actually stayed away. That earned him a different kind of respect--and, I should add, it's not quite as universal or uncritical as Ali's: whether your name ends with a vowel is a pretty good predictor of whether you elect Marciano to godhead. But note, apropos of Mayweather's case, which at the moment resembles Marciano's, that Marciano never did figure out what to do with himself in retirement. He got a certain Depression-child charge out of free lunches and free rides, which I think Mayweather is too blase about being rich to get excited about, but he seemed to be restless and aimless to the end. These days, a restless and aimless fighter who can make megamillions for his Big Comeback Extravaganza is a lot less likely to stay retired. So if I had to predict, I would say that the Marciano model will give way to the Ali model (minus most of the love and charisma), and we'll see Mayweather, far more popular than he is now, fighting well past the point where his aura of perfection is shattered by younger men.
Charles & Carlo covered and said all that there is to be said. His retirement just reminded me that I had forgotten about him, long ago. The guy just never did it for me. Like Steve Young of the 49ers, he was outstanding/extraordinary. Also like Young, he'll never be remembered unless you see him or he does something to make news/ESPN.
It remains to be seen whether, if Mayweather comes back in a diminished capacity that eventually leads to some sort of beating, people will respond favorably to him. I agree that's a fairly standard trajectory for extraordinary fighters who become mortal. But it didn't happen for Roy Jones, who just gets laughed at every time he's beaten up. I wonder if Mayweather, whose persona is close to Roy's, might not meet a similar fate
Nice call on Steve Young, Frank, but picture Steve Young going around saying he's the greatest of all time--an unlovely combination of blandness and ego. And Charles, I agree that Roy Jones is the operative model. But I think there's going to be a big difference, if Mayweather goes the Jones route and sticks around into his dotage: it may well turn out that Mayweather can take a beating. People laugh at Jones because they see him in their mind's eye laid out with one punch, and the difference between that and his big talk strikes them as ridiculous. They don't laugh at Ali, another talker, because they see him taking it and taking it. (Weird, I know, since it's taking it and taking it that messes you up for keeps.) Mayweather hasn't shown a great chin yet, but he hasn't had to, and he strikes me as a guy who may well turn out to have a pretty good one--which will both win him more respect and ensure that he takes a lot more damage.
Carlo, point taken. I see Jones as brittle in a way that Mayweather clearly is not. When it comes down to that, Mayweather might be more like James Toney, able to roll and dip (and absorb when he must.)
In other words, Carlo, Steve Young is much easier to stomach than Floyd Mayweather. Right?
Well, yes, Frank, but on the other hand, as Charles says, Mayweather seems capable of a Toney-like old age in which everybody says "Hey, he's a crank and kind of a clown, but look at those old-school chops, and nobody can say he can't take it," whereas if Young played until he was 50 it would just be more earnest drudgery at a high level of competence.
I'm not sure I agree with Charles on that. Toney plays a great crank or bad guy. Mayweather, hasn't shown me, that he has a charm wearing any color hat. It's not like he can comeback and fight bigger guys, and if he takes any meaningful time off and comes back at 147, he'll get knocked on his ass in such away there'll be nothing redeeming about it.
What is interesting about Floyd’s message is that, as I reproduced it, it uses the logo of Mayweather Promotions. Thus far, this company has done little. Apparently, he wants to model it after Golden Boy Promotions. That would mean that he will seek a cozy deal with a network, most likely HBO, and sign some top fighters.
Golden Boy, however, has many of the best HBO dates locked up. Mayweather Promotions could co-promote some fights with them, but it will take some time to establish themselves, assuming that the HBO suits want to work with them.
Mayweather, though, has been tight with the shadowy wirepuller Al Haymon, so that might open up some business with HBO or some other media monstrosity.
What this retirement announcement does undoubtedly mean, unless it is reversed in a week or two, is that the proposed Sept. 20 rematch between De La Hoya and Mayweather is off. Who, exactly, was clamoring for that one?
Remember that in the last year, Mayweather had already begun to branch out. He appeared on “Dancing with the Stars” and in the fake “wrestling”. He also had a team in the “Iron Ring” mixed martial arts series on BET, and then left right before their pretaped finals to do the W”W”E. He did something (I can’t recall exactly) at this year’s Indy 500.
Floyd wrote that “boxing is all I have done since I was a child.” Now he has played in some other sandboxes. I also do believe that he is sincere when he says, “I just can't do it anymore.”
But for how long? He may not be able to get up now for a rigorous training schedule for rematches with guys he has just beaten, and for which there is little interest (outside of Manchester, England, that is). He also has shown little interest in facing the younger and harder-punching Miguel Cotto in a welterweight grand unification. That, of course, is the one fight involving him which both casual and devoted observers of boxing want to see.
Floyd may even believe that this is it. He likely is not considering the broader issues and history involved.
But remember that Roy Jones, while in his prime, said repeatedly that he did not want to continue fighting too long and get beaten up and hurt as an old man. He was very affected by the Gerald McClellan tragedy. Now, of course, you can’t keep him out of the ring, and his January bout with Tito Trinidad at Madison Square Garden did about 500,000 pay-per-view buys.
It thus seems highly unlikely, unless there is some problem about which we don’t know, that Mayweather, age 31 and still unbeaten, will remain retired as a fighter for too long. He now has to give back his WBC and Ring belts, and has already been removed from the active rankings on BoxRec.com.
He’ll be sitting at home with his kids, watching some other fighters in a 24-7 infomercial, and saying to himself that he could destroy both bums in one night. He’ll find that having won all his accolades and titles in the ring does not help him as much as he thought in being a promoter right outside the ring. He’ll take some time off, then hunger for a physical challenge.
I do hope that this is really it for Floyd, and that he is both successful and content as a promoter and performer in whatever fields he selects. I just don’t believe that history is on his side in any of this.
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