The Fight That Keeps Not Happening

Chair by the window, and the bloke with half a fade wants to know who wins Floyd and Manny, and when. Nobody, mate. There's no fight. There's no date. But one of them is winning it anyway, and it isn't the one who's 50 and 0.

The barber doesn't look up. He just taps the comb on the Netflix poster somebody's cousin stuck to the mirror back in February. Sphere, Las Vegas, 19 September. That date came and went. So did the backup. The poster's still there, curling at one corner, like a parking fine nobody's paid.

Sit down. Let's count what this non-fight has cost, and who's been paying.

The receipts

In February it was real. A pro rematch, announced for Netflix, Floyd saying he'd beaten Manny once and would do it again, Manny saying he wanted Floyd to "live with the one loss on his professional record." Proper fight talk. Contracts, Manny's camp says. Three of them.

Then on 29 March Floyd told Vegas Sports Today it was "not actually a fight, it's an exhibition," so "we're both winners." That's the backflip. You don't turn a pro fight into a hug with gloves on unless something in the pro version scares you. Manny's reply was short: the contract they signed "is for a real fight."

Then the lawyers turned up. In June, CSI, the mob promoting Floyd's exhibition with Mike Tyson, sued him in federal court in New York. CSI alleges he breached an exclusivity deal by lining up an exhibition in Athens against the Greek kickboxer Mike Zambidis, and it's reportedly chasing at least US$4.65 million in advances. Floyd's side is fighting it and the case is still open. Within a week Manny's camp said the rematch was postponed indefinitely, blaming "a volatile mix of federal lawsuits, scheduling overbooks, and financial gridlock completely surrounding the Mayweather camp." Their words, not mine.

That's not the whole pile. Floyd is suing Showtime, claiming he's owed "at least" US$340 million, which is his allegation, not a finding. The IRS reportedly filed a tax lien of about US$7.3 million. He's been charged in Las Vegas over an alleged US$200,000 bad cheque for a watch, and his lawyer says there was "absolutely no intent to defraud." USA Today reports creditors have chased him in at least four states. And last week he withdrew his own US$175 million suit against his old business manager, without prejudice, with no reason given.

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None of that is proven against him, and plenty of it may never be. I'm not the judge. I'm the bloke holding the clippers. But you don't need a verdict to see which direction the weather is blowing.

The mechanism

Here's the one thing to take home.

The 0 is not an asset. It's a loan, and Floyd pays interest on it every day this fight doesn't happen.

Think about what each side actually has on the table. Manny is 62 and 8. He's lost to Floyd, to Juan Manuel Marquez, to a former schoolteacher from Queensland. A loss is already priced in. There's nothing on his record left to protect, so every month of delay costs him roughly nothing. He trains, he talks, he takes other meetings.

Floyd's whole brand is the thing he'd risk. So every postponement adds a month to his age (he's 49), another filing to the docket, another headline where the word "alleged" sits next to his name. The exhibition call in March was him trying to refinance the loan: keep the payday, take the 0 off the table. Manny's camp said no: the contracts say pro. So the interest keeps compounding.

Manny doesn't need to throw a punch. He just needs to keep being available. And he is. This week the talk had him on the Tyson Fury and Anthony Joshua card in Cardiff on 11 December. Shakur Stevenson was the first name floated, until Dana White knocked it down ("That's not true. Not true."), and reports now have Amir Khan and Danny Garcia pitched instead. Nothing's signed. But look at the contrast. Netflix reportedly wants Manny on the Fury and Joshua card. Floyd's next public plan, in his own words at the weekend, is the Greece exhibition again. No date, no venue.

One man's getting offers. The other's getting served.

Brisbane already knew

We had a front row seat to Manny's real superpower in 2017. Jeff Horn, that same Queenslander, fought him at Suncorp Stadium in front of 51,052 people and took the WBO welterweight title on a unanimous decision. Half the boxing world screamed robbery. The WBO had the rounds reviewed and Horn kept the win.

Here's the bit that matters. Manny came to Brisbane. He took an away fight against a local who had nothing to lose, in the middle of a Queensland winter, and he lost. Then he kept fighting. He beat an unbeaten Keith Thurman at 40. He drew with a reigning WBC champ at 46.

Floyd never had to take a Brisbane. That's the difference between a fighter and a record. A fighter goes where the fight is. A record picks its rooms.

Now, the GOAT bit, because someone always asks

The shop's position hasn't moved. Sugar Ray Robinson is the craft GOAT. When ESPN ranked the 50 greatest boxers in 2007, it put Robinson at number one with a record of 175 wins and 19 losses. Nineteen. Still number one, because what he did inside the ropes mattered more than what the ledger said.

Same list had Floyd at 48. He was 38 and 0 at the time. In fairness, ESPN also wrote that he had "greater potential than anyone on this list to rise or fall," and he rose. He beat Canelo. He beat Manny clean in 2015, 118-110 and 116-112 twice, and don't let anyone tell you the shoulder turned a coin toss into a hiding. It was a clinic.

But a clinic isn't a throne. On pure craft, I don't have Floyd in the top five. Robinson, Armstrong, Pep, Whitaker and Duran all did more, and risked more doing it. The 0 is what gets Floyd into those conversations. It's a record protection argument dressed up as a craft argument, and it works right up until someone asks him to put it on the line. Then it's an exhibition.

So who's winning?

The bloke with the half fade finally gets it. "So Manny wins by not fighting?"

Close. Manny wins because the fight keeps not happening, and every week it doesn't, Floyd's side of the ledger gets heavier. Jas Mathur, speaking for Pacquiao's camp, says January is the plan. Maybe. There's no signed date, no venue, no broadcaster announced. If January turns into March and March turns into "no comment," I know which man walks out with his name in better shape.

The poster on the mirror can stay up. It's the most honest thing in the shop. A date that passed, a venue that bailed, and two blokes staring at each other, one with nothing to lose and one with everything to protect.

The day this gets a real date, or gets binned for good, the list hears it first. Pop your email in the Join the List box below and I'll tell you straight: pro or exhibition, 0 on the line or not, and whether the bill finally got paid.

Rico Holt  ·  ricoholt.com