And is he now regretting his retirement? OK, so Mayweather/DLH 2 was supposedly agreed and almost signed & sealed while Hatton was spending every second of his publicity time trying to entice a rematch himself. Then Mayweather backed out of the DLH fight and retired citing a lack of enthusiasm for fighting anymore. Next thing Manny takes Floyd place in the fight and beats Oscar easily and suddenly Floyd is forgotton and Manny is proved as his genuine successor... even Hatton gives up his Floyd obsession and focusses on Pac instead. Within a few weeks we hear that Floyd is interested in coming back - against Hatton! In the first fight Oscar took Floyd to a split decision... did Floyd retire because he was worried about Oscar going one better? I know DLH didn't look great in his previous fight but considering that it was supposed to be Floyd fighting the Pac bout and how fast Floyd seems to have changed his mind after that it makes his excuses for retiring sound a little questionable to me... The strange thing is he's apparently contacted Hatton's camp rather than Pac's. OK so both are big money but is Hatton a bigger draw than Pac? Worldwide? I don't think so. And Floyd has already done that once... Maybe this time it's not about money...maybe Floyd is actually annoyed that he's being forgotten so soon. It's one thing to retire and have people talk about you for years to come, but when someone replaces you pretty much instantly then I guess it can hit your pride. Could Floyd be jealous that Hatton has dropped his rematch obsession in favour of Manny? Or does he want to fight Hatton to get a psychological edge over Manny? Maybe a Mayweather/Pac is on the cards but first Mayweather wants to show that he's still the guy at the top and is a bigger name to beat than Manny. He wants to put Manny into second place before he fights him rather than go in as equals. Most people expected Floyd to make a comeback at some stage...but a few weeks after someone else beat his would be opponent in the fight that was meant to be his? Right after his biggest chaser decides to move on? Floyd is not afraid of Hatton, and I'm not sure he's scared of Pac either..but did he get cold feet about Oscar and is now feeling like he's slipped up?
I doubt he was scared of Oscar who shot his bolt when they 1st fought & still came up short. The age difference would suggest that if anyone was gonna be worse for the rematch it was DLH not Mayweather... but I suppose only FMJ truly knows, we can only guess.
There are a lot tougher guys than Oscar in the welterweight division. The reason Floyd fought Oscar is because he was the lesser of all the threats with a bigger name. Sort of why Oscar fought Pacman, yet that backfired on Oscar.
It was a brilliant stroke by DLH to throw the Pac fight in order to entice PBF out of retirement to fight one of GBPs fighters in Hatton BTW, I bought a bridge in London last week :yep
I doubt PBF is afraid of such a shot fighter. He fought Oscar because he could : a) get the best pay day and b) Oscar was not a threat, unlike guys like Cotto, PW, Margo, etc.
I think Floyd was afraid of losing a fight with his father in the opposite corner. The first Floyd vs Oscar fight was a split decision. Personally, and most people agree that Floyd won clearly, but the scorecards came back, and it was a spilt decision. That's about as close as you can get while still winning. So, a Floyd win in a rematch was not exactly considered an absolute certainty at the time. Floyd likes is "0", and Floyd hates his dad. I think the slightest possible chance of Floyd "losing to his dad" made him back out.
