Floyd Mayweather Jr. wasn’t joking. The fighter, who turns 49 today and retired nine years ago, said last week that he planned to return to active prizefighting after an exhibition with Mike Tyson next month.
Apparently, he was serious. Mayweather has reportedly inked a September 3 rematch with Manny Pacquiao in Las Vegas, per Ring Magazine’s Mike Coppinger, re-litigating the biggest event and one of the biggest paydays of his career. When the two originally fought in Vegas in May 2015, it was the most hyped fight of boxing’s pay-per-view era. Both fighters were multi-division world champions at the apex of their fame, and fans clamored for years for them to settle who was the best of the era. Mayweather won a unanimous decision, unifying the welterweight world championship and earning a reported $250 million for 36 minutes of work.
Unless he’s really bored spending all of his money, Mayweather seemingly has little reason to jump back into the hurt business. He’s a grandfather and an Olympic medalist who beat every opponent he squared up with. He innovated in his sport, ditching his promoters to own his megafights. That earned him so much money—The Sporting News put his active career earnings at $1.billion, making him one of only 11 athletes to ever gross 10 figures from their sports—that he changed his nickname from “Pretty Boy” to “Money Mayweather”.
Fans had time to poke fun at the fighters’ ages on social media on Monday after news broke.
Mayweather officially retired from active prizefighting with a 50-0 record after beating MMA legend Conor McGregor in 2017, while Pacquiao, 47, has fought eight more times since then, beating several former world champions and last fighting to a draw against Mario Barrios in Las Vegas last July.