Floyd Mayweather is as elusive in victory as he can be in combat. He could not get out of the way of Marcos Maidana's teeth here on Saturday night - a desperate chomp that numbed three of his fingers and astonished even Mike Tyson at ringside - but he again played cat and mouse over who he will fight next, neither anointing Manny Pacquiao after five years of fruitless talks nor giving Amir Khan further encouragement.
It was another of those enigmatic performances, more convincing in the ring when he found enough of his old rhythm to outpoint the hungry Argentinian carnivore and retain his welterweight and light-middleweight titles than he was in backtracking on a commitment to 'make it happen' with Pacquiao.
In the ring after hearing the judges had for once witnessed the same fight as everyone else - 115-112, 116-111 twice were decent calls - Mayweather said this: 'I'm going to talk to my team and if the Pacquiao fight presents itself, let's make it happen.'
A couple of hours later, bruised and hoarse but happy enough with his performance (which he reckoned was not as good as his win over Maidana in May), he said this: 'I don't really think about Pacquiao. I don't really know him. I wish him all the best but I couldn't care less about Manny Pacquiao. I am only focused on Floyd Mayweather. If it happens, it happens.'
Leonard Ellerbe, his chief executive at Mayweather Promotions, speaking before his partner arrived, saw it this way: 'Floyd is ready to fight anybody. Of course there is hope [of a Pacquiao fight next May]. It's all about giving the fans what they want to see. Hopefully we can get it together and make it happen.'
But it is decidedly not about giving the fans what they want to see. It is about giving Floyd what he wants. No one tells him what to do, not even the World Boxing Council, the guardians of his belts who last December made Pacquiao his mandatory challenger only to rule almost immediately that Mayweather was 'in a voluntary stage' and need not fight the Filipino.
That allowed him to fight Maidana last May but the mandatory status of the second biggest draw in boxing, Pacquiao, has been rendered irrelevant.
What let the WBC off the hook was Pacquiao's win over Tim Bradley, which gave him the World Boxing Organisation welterweight belt and automatically took him out of the WBC rankings. So even if Pacquiao beats the undefeated Chris Algieri in Macau in November, he will be no nearer a mandated fight with Mayweather.
Bizarre, but true.
The WBC made Khan its No1 contender in May but not the mandatory challenger, aware that, if it tries to force Mayweather's hand, he could give up the belt - and it would be left with a seriously devalued championship, and much lower sanctioning fees. If Khan fights and beats Josesito López in December, as expected, he stays in the picture, no better than that.
As for Mayweather's view of Khan, whom he promised the first 2013 crack at his titles, only to give it to Maidana - twice - he said: 'Amir Khan is a very good fighter. But when he was an amateur, I was a champion. When he turned pro, I was a champion. When he got knocked out, I was a champion. When he got knocked out again, I was a champion. And I'm still a champion.'
Not a lot of wriggle room there for the Bolton fighter but he was upbeat enough watching from ringside - alongside Tyson, as it happens, so privy to an expert on the subject of biting. 'Tyson's eyes lit up when it happened,' Khan said of the former heavyweight champion who infamously left Evander Holyfield with less ear than he started with when they fought for the second time in the same ring 17 years ago. 'But it's wrong. You should respect the sport of boxing. Bites and elbows, that's something I've never done in my career. I was very surprised. I thought Mayweather was making it up but when I saw the slow motion it was really bad.'
Maidana's mental, dental move arrived midway through the eighth round.
Frustrated by Mayweather's wicked body shots and needing a knockout to win (although he reckoned later he had won the fight), he could be seen wrapping his mouth around Floyd's left glove for several seconds, and the champion reeled away in obvious discomfort.
As Mayweather remembered it: 'We clinched, we came together and he bit my three fingers. My little finger was busted open. He acted like he didn't do it, then he said I had put my glove inside his mouth.'
Khan added: 'Maidana was doing well, Mayweather wasn't schooling him like people were saying. He was getting some shots in. It can happen to anyone [getting that frustrated] but it is how you deal with it mentally. I thought Mayweather was just coming up with excuses. It seemed strange because he was complaining a lot. When I saw the replay I put my hands up, because I was wrong.'
Mayweather, ludicrously, earned only a majority verdict in their first fight. This was far more clear-cut. He came through some rough moments when Maidana was fresh but once he started to sap the challenger's strength and let his own punches flow, he made him miss almost at will.
He slipped 186 of Maidana's 237 jabs and 128 of his 335 heavy shots. That is impressive defensive boxing, although he took one or two big hits, notably a cracking right to the chin on the bell in the third round, probably the hardest he has been hit since Shane Mosley caught him with a similar punch in 2010.
So, there was much to admire about Mayweather's work in his 47th straight win. While he plainly is not as razor sharp as he was, say, when he knocked out Ricky Hatton seven years ago, he still has too much for anyone at or around his weight. He should beat Pacquiao, but there is the unknown element of age. 'I feel fine,' he said. Blood seeping from his mouth told a story of a fighter cutting up more than he used to.
The endgame might look something like this, then: Mayweather defends next May against either Khan or Danny García, if the American steps up to welter. In his supposed farewell fight in September - presuming he wins in May - he can pick from either of those two opponents, or perhaps Keith Thurman, Kell Brook or Saúl Álvarez, at light-middleweight, where Mayweather also holds a belt.
And then, having equalled Rocky Marciano's 49-0 record, he announces he is walking away ... only to say he will return for one more fight: against Pacquiao. Mayweather will conduct an auction, with HBO and Showtime pushing bids to ludicrous heights, before agreeing to share the broadcast (as they did when Tyson finally fought Lennox Lewis in 2002) and he and Pacquiao will retire all the richer, while the rest of us will wonder what might have been had they fought when equals at their peak.
Post By http://www.theguardian.com/sport/2014/sep/14/floyd-mayweather-marcos-maidana-biting-incident
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