Floyd Mayweather is poised to return to the professional scene in September, as he takes on rival Manny Pacquiao for a second time, and super-middleweight legend Andre Ward has issued ‘TBE’ with a warning ahead of that fight.
Mayweather famously boasts a professional record of 50-0, having retired off the back of a victory in his lucrative showdown with Conor McGregor in 2017, fighting solely in exhibition bouts in the years that have followed.
Yet, over a decade on from his triumph over Pacquiao in their first meeting in 2015, the two pound-for-pound superstars are set to run it back in Mayweather’s professional comeback, at the respective ages of 49 and 47 years old.
Speaking on the ‘All The Smoke Fight’ YouTube channel, Hall of Fame fighter Ward, who also retired undefeated, explained why he believes Mayweather should resist the urge to continue to box after his rematch with ‘Pac Man’.
“Floyd Mayweather’s return is bitter sweet to me. I don’t mind Floyd and Manny [fighting each other], but if Floyd starts to campaign, which it seems like he is, as a professional fighter doing real sanctioned fights, I am struggling with that.
“I don’t want to see Floyd take a loss against a guy that we’ve never heard of. I don’t want to see Floyd take a loss against a younger fighter, because the younger fighters, these days, they play for keeps.
“They are not so enamoured with Floyd, where they won’t try to beat him up. They don’t love Floyd so much where they don’t want that ‘0’ on their record. They want to be able to say, ‘I did that to Floyd’, because then their name is forever etched in history.
“There is nothing that they can do, before or after that, that is going to be bigger than them giving Floyd his first loss.”
Before Mayweather can fully focus on his Filipino foe, he first takes on heavyweight icon Mike Tyson in an exhibition contest, which is reported to take place in the Democratic Republic of Congo, on Saturday, April 25.
