Floyd Mayweather Jr (46-0, 26 KO’s) ended speculation about who he’ll be facing for his next fight by announcing on Monday that he will indeed be facing Marcos Maidana (35-4, 31 KO’s) in a rematch on September 13th at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nevada, and that he also has plans for a huge fight next May on Cinco de Mayo.
Mayweather didn’t say who his opponent will be for next May, but it’s got to be a big, big name in order to persuade Bob Arum of Top Rank in trying to compete with Mayweather by putting on Saul “Canelo” Alvarez vs. Miguel Cotto on the same night on HBO pay-per-view.
Mayweather said “We’re still doing record breaking numbers on pay-per-view. On September 13th, back to business – Marcos Maidana-Floyd Mayweather part 2, and then in May I’m going to have a big surprise for you. Everybody tune in.”
Maidana gave Mayweather a really tough time last May in losing a 12 round majority decision. A lot of boxing fans felt that Maidana had done enough to deserve a decision in that fight. Mayweather fought in a stationary manner instead of using his legs, and this led to him taking a lot of punishment from Maidana.
It’s a good thing that Mayweather finally got around to announcing the Maidana rematch now, because he needs more time to market the fight than what they did last time they fought. Mayweather took too long in making his decision to fight Maidana, and that obviously hurt the PPV numbers for the fight. Mayweather wasted valuable time by having boxing fans pick his next opponent on his website in a competition between Maidana and Amir Khan.
When Khan won the competition after urging his huge twitter following to get out and vote, Mayweather still opted to go with Maidana rather than Khan. But this time Mayweather is starting early in announcing that Maidana will be the one he’s fighting next, and that has to be seen as a positive for him in terms of increasing the PPV buys.
There’s still no official PPV number for the Mayweather-Maidana I fight last May, but you would have to guess that the rematch will do considerably better PPV numbers due to the competitive nature of their first fight.
