At 44-years-old with a 50-0 record, Floyd Mayweather's boxing legacy is secured. He doesn't need to prove anything to anyone anymore. However, with a lucrative payday waiting for him for every time he laces up the gloves, there's enough incentive for Mayweather to risk his unblemished record. But, it appears that for his next fight, it's not just a big payday that he's after, there's something personal on the line as well.
According to recent reports, Mayweather now wants to fight against Jake Paul after the controversial figure slid into the DMs of Mayweather's on-off girlfriend on Instagram.
Jake Paul might have successfully goaded the GOAT
YouTuber Jake Paul has had a respectable career so far as an up-and-coming professional boxer. He's currently 4-0 with wins over retired MMA champions such as Ben Askren and Tyron Woodley under his belt. Since his fight against Woodley, he's been looking to score bigger fish. He's even got a vote of confidence from Khabib Nurmagodemov's coach, Javier Mendez, in case he decided to fight Conor McGregor.
With that said, it appears that Paul might have just landed the biggest fish of them all.
Paul's history with Mayweather stretches back to when his older brother, Logan Paul, fought against Mayweather in an exhibition match back in December 2020. In the lead-up to the match, Jake went as far as to steal Mayweather's hat, a stunt that the younger Paul claims resulted in the legendary boxer hiring gangsters to "take him out".
Now, a source at The Sun claims that Mayweather has had enough. Floyd's patience had reportedly been running thin after seeing Paul destroy boxing "by being disrespectful about great boxers and saying he wants to be the world champion." Then, to top it all off, Paul reportedly sent Floyd's girlfriend, Anna Monroe, a private message on Instagram, saying that Monroe needed to be with a "real man" and that Mayweather had been ducking him since December's exhibition match.
TLDR; Paul's antics might have finally paved the way for a Floyd Mayweather vs Jake Paul fight sometime in the future. However it's worth noting that Mayweather put in decades of work for that 50-0 record. We don't think that he'll put it on the line against a fighter like Paul. Even if he did, a 51-0 record assuming that he won just doesn't have the same ring to it as 50-0.
Then again, who knows? Given how things have turned out in professional boxing in recent years, we can't really rule out anything.
