By Norm Frauenheim–
It’s been nearly three weeks since the boxing business was left to wonder whether Floyd Mayweather Jr. is really retired or already plotting a comeback.
Who knows? Better yet, who cares?
The bet here is that he’ll hint at a comeback throughout the next year and maybe longer just to prolong the guessing game. Above all, he loves to be in control of everything around him. Those hints, dropped at the right time and in the right place, are just another way of exerting that control.
For the rest of the business, however, the real task rests in how it proceeds in an attempt to redefine itself.
At this point, the GPS is a mix of conflicting signals. There’s some good news, of course. To wit: Adrien Broner (30-2, 22 KOs) — who tries to re-start his erratic career Saturday in hometown Cincinnati against Khabib Allakhverdiev (19-1, 9 KOs) in a Showtime bout — still isn’t talking to the mainstream media.
Hard to say whether Broner’s silence will last longer than Mayweather’s retirement or vice versa. Maybe, both are permanent. We can hope. Then again, odds against that Daily Double are higher than Andre Berto’s chances were against Mayweather on Sept. 12.
The big question is this: Who becomes the face of the battered game?
It’s beginning to look as if reigning heavyweight Wladimir Klitschko is getting closer to the end of ihs brilliant, yet unappreciated career. That much was evident last week when his bout with Tyson Fury was abruptly shelved by a calf injury sustained in training.
Meanwhile, Deontay Wilder’s status as Klitschko’s heir-apparent looked to be a little shaky last Saturday in a late-round TKO against Johann Duhaupas, a Frenchman who could have been Charles De Gaulle for all anybody knew. Or cared.
Turns out, not many cared. Wilder won, but the ratings for the NBC telecast were down in an ongoing ratings decline for Premier Boxing Champions (PBC) shows.
Above all, the business looks to be at an uncertain crossroads. But potential clarity looms, first at New York’s Madison Square Garden on Oct. 17 when middleweight Gennady Golovkin appears in his first pay-per-view bout against David Lemieux on an HBO card that also includes Mayweather’s pound-for-successor, Nicaraguan flyweight Roman Gonzalez against Brian Viloria.
The guess in this corner is that Golovkin blows away Lemieux in the mid-to-late rounds after the wild-swinging Lemieux exhausts himself in a furious and futile attempt to score a huge upset in the early going.
Lemieux is fun, but the Canadian just doesn’t have enough skill to hang with the unbeaten GGG.
The true mid-October test rests in how Golovkin does in the PPV market. Does anybody other than hardcore fight fans know the middleweight from Kazakhstan? We’ll see. If the PPV numbers are more than 300,000, it’ll be a pretty good jumping-off point for the next stage in GGG’s career.
Then, there’s Nov. 21 at Las Vegas’ Mandalay Bay in an old-school revival of the Mexican-Puerto Rican rivalry with Mexico’s Canelo Avarez against Puerto Rico’s Miguel Cotto.
It promises to be a big money maker for all involved –fighters, promoters and HBO. It also could set the stage for a bout between GGG and the Canelo-Cotto winner in what would be another biggie and another reason to forget tired talk about what Mayweather will, or won’t, do.
