After a 50-0 professional career, modern-day great Floyd Mayweather has been a steady feature on the exhibition circuit.
Having defeated the likes of Oscar De La Hoya, Manny Pacquiao, Saul ‘Canelo’ Alvarez and Miguel Cotto, all the while becoming far and away the biggest box office attraction in the sport, Mayweather popularised the perfect record like no other.
Now he continues to make money from the sport in non-competitive bouts, having had a move around with Logan Paul, Tenshin Nasukawa, Aaron Chalmers and more.
His last outing was against John Gotti III, the grandson of the notorious mob boss of the same name, and ended in a brawl both in and out of the ring.
The rematch is now set, and Gotti says this time around he will not be tricked into thinking it’s anything less than a fight.
“I want this to be remembered as a very entertaining fight. Floyd keeps repeating himself, saying ‘boxing showcase’ and ‘boxing exhibition.’ I’ve been watching Floyd my whole life, since I’m a kid. I’ve never once seen Floyd show up early to an event. I was early in Florida and he’s already there warming up. I’ve never seen Floyd prepare the way he has, and I’ve never seen Floyd throw as many punches in two minutes as he did in our fight.
So obviously it was a fight. Obviously, he wanted to hurt me and knock me out. So, he’s not gonna snooker me again with this exhibition nonsense. He’s coming to knock me out again and I’m gonna try to knock him out this time, so that’s that.”
Ever-confident in his skillset, Mayweather was adamant that it was just about ‘having fun.’
“I truly believe that if I took a lot of abuse in the sport of boxing throughout my career, then I probably wouldn’t still be doing exhibitions or putting on boxing showcases, but I didn’t take no abuse in the sport of boxing so I feel like I can continue to go out there, have fun and put on shows throughout the world.
Last time I checked, I’ve beat more fighters that are in the Hall of Fame than any fighter in history and that’s truly a blessing. But [Gotti] is a tough competitor and I take my hat off to him. He wanna run it back, we can run it back twice, three times. It is what it is. I was born to be a fighter, I’m gonna die a fighter at the end of the day.”
Mayweather will face Gotti on August 24 at Arena Ciudad de México in Mexico City.
