| 22 December 2011
By now you've no doubt heard the news. Floyd Mayweather will be headed to jail early next year after a judge sentenced him to 90 days for his guilty plea to a battery domestic violence charge. He'll also have to pay a $2,500 fine and do 100 hours of community service.
As boxing fans, we're most concerned with what this does to the landscape of top-level boxing matches for 2012. And boy, does it do a lot.
For starters, it means there's absolutely no way Mayweather will meet Manny Pacquiao in the much-anticipated-but-simultaneously-getting-tiresome proposed mega-fight in May. There was already a chance, likely a very strong chance, it wasn't going to happen, but Floyd's time behind bars seals the deal. Since he has to report on January 6, he'll be getting out in early April (or maybe a few weeks sooner if good behavior allows). There's zero possibility that he'll be ready to go against Manny or anyone else on May 5.
Since Mayweather's early May date is now open for anyone else who wants it, the guess here is that Pacquiao slides into that weekend instead. I'd put his possible opponents in the following order of probability: Juan Manuel Marquez for the fourth time, Timothy Bradley for the first time, or Miguel Cotto in a rematch. Manny would then be on track to take a second fight later in the year, as in November or early December.
Lawyers for Mayweather have mentioned that he could appeal his sentence, which would put him out of commission even longer. For the sake of argument, though, let's say he does his time as scheduled and is out in April. That would allow him to fight Pac-Man in the fourth quarter of 2012, but do you really think he'd go right into such a huge bout after a year of inactivity, a quarter of which was spent in jail? A September date would make more sense for Mayweather. Who he'd fight is a whole other question. There was talk of a meeting with Erik Morales, which could be built into something around Mexican Independence Day. I'm also thinking Andre Berto; if he wins his February rematch against Victor Ortiz, he'd be ready to return to the ring in the fall.
You can also see how this development impacts someone like Cotto. If Pacquiao-Mayweather had any chance of happening next spring, he'd be apt to look for his own big fight for the first half of the year, thinking that he was out of the running for another crack at Pac-Man. But if Floyd looks like he's off the table until 2013, suddenly it's not hard to imagine him taking a lesser fight first to position himself for that rematch 10 or 11 months from now.
There's a meta effect on the sport as a whole too. Only so many boxers are pay-per-view, event-style attractions, and I've already mentioned more than half of them. The next wave of guys who aren't yet proven - and here I'm looking at you, Andre Ward, and asking you to reconsider your hesitance to fight Lucian Bute - may be called upon to fill the void before they're ready.
Any time a top pound-for-pound fighter is put on the shelf for whatever reason, you can see the ripples across the sweet science like the proverbial stone in a pond. Mayweather's plight is more like dropping an iceberg into a small lake. Love him or hate him, an active Mayweather is good for boxing, and the uncertainty about when he'll put on the gloves again is anything but good. Prepare for some uncertain times ahead.
