By Edward Chaykovsky
Veteran trainer and ESPN analyst Teddy Atlas expects both Manny Pacquiao and Floyd Mayweather Jr. to come out of retirement at some point.
Mayweather retired last September after dominating Andre Berto over twelve rounds. Pacquiao retired after his trilogy victory over Tim Bradley last month in Las Vegas. Atlas trained Bradley for that contest.
Mayweather is already hinting at a potential comeback in the fall, while Pacquiao is undecided on what might happen in the future. Pacquiao was recently elected to a senatorial position in the Philippines.
If Pacquiao does return, his trainer Freddie Roach told krikya360.com that a Mayweather rematch would be a priority for them. Mayweather won a dominant decision over Pacquiao last May, and the fight generated 4.6 million pay-per-views and shattered every financial record associated with the sport.
"I think Manny’s gonna wind up coming back, that’s number one, I do think that he will come back. It was comical, they were putting this fight forward as his last fight, but even in the press conferences they were saying, “Well maybe it’s his last fight,” they were already hedging. If you know it’s a guy’s last fight, you’re not saying that maybe it’s his last fight," Atlas told .
"Obviously there’s an understanding there that it’s probably not his last fight and if I was asked to bet on it, I would probably wager that it’s not going to be his last fight. Having said that, I don’t think there’s any interest in a rematch with Mayweather. The way that fight went and the styles of the two fighters, one guy that can be aggressive and the other fighter who takes the air out of the ball. Mayweather fights a defensive fight, he doesn’t take chances, he’s terrific. I love Floyd, but it is what it is, he fights a careful fight, he disarms you, he doesn’t fight a TV friendly fight."
"Mayweather doesn’t fight the kind of fight where you want to pay seventy dollars for pay-per-view, or one hundred dollars for pay-per-view. Being that we already got a dress rehearsal of that, why would you want to go see it again? I just don’t understand why people are even asking that question, or proposing the possibility of a rematch having seen what they’ve seen already."