Boxing's pound-for-pound king Floyd Mayweather Jr. made a high-profile visit to South Africa this week, where he unsurprisingly had much to say. "Money" Mayweather stopped short of revealing who his next opponent will be, but any fans hoping for a dark horse candidate to emerge is not going to be satisfied.
For weeks and months Amir Khan has been the frontrunner, with Marcos "El Chino" Maidana entering the picture after dominating Adrien Broner in December. While many fans continue to clamor for Floyd to step into the squared circle with Manny Pacquiao, "Money" has slammed down that possibility once and for all regarding his May 3rd date.
"I offered Manny Pacquiao the fight before," Mayweather said. "We didn't see eye to eye on terms. Years later we come back and I try and make the fight happen again. I offer him $40 million. He said he wanted 50-50. So we didn't make the fight happen.
"All of a sudden, he loses to Timothy Bradley, he loses to Marquez ... he has tax problems now. So, two losses and tax problems later, now he all of a sudden want to say: 'You know what? I'd do anything to make the fight happen,' when he's really saying: 'Floyd, can you help me solve my tax problems, get me out of debt?'"
With Pacquiao out of the way, Mayweather mentioned Khan and Maidana again before assuring the crowd that a decision will be made soon. The question is...what choice is there? It's been reported that Broner has exercised a rematch clause with Maidana, leaving Khan as the only name associated with the Money Team.
"We'll know within the next seven days if it's Amir Khan, if it's Marcos Maidana," Mayweather said. "We don't know who it is at this particular time. Hopefully it's somebody who is very, very exciting so that we can continue to give you guys nothing but excitement."
Either Floyd doesn't know that Maidana's occupied, or he has something up his sleeve. Otherwise, get ready for "King" Khan to return to the ring in May in a new weight class.
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