Mayweather vs. Cotto: Hype Surrounding Money Makes Retirement Impossible

At the end of his bout against Miguel Cotto on Saturday, Floyd Mayweather looked like a guy thinking about retirement.

He looked more beat up than usual, more tired; he seemed more mellow, he talked with less arrogance than has come to be expected from the best boxer in the world.

He hinted at retirement more than once, telling the Associated Press, "I don't know where we're going to go from here because we basically have fought everybody in this sport. I don't have to fight if I don't want to."

However, Mayweather can't retire—and not only because of the possibility of a fight against you-know-who. He can't retire because in his unanimous decision over Cotto on Saturday, he proved he still has too much left in the tank to give up now.

One could argue that the timing is right. Mayweather is 43-0, and he has the opportunity to go down in history as undefeated and as one of the greatest boxers ever. He's going to jail for 87 days starting next month, and calling it quits before then might make sense.

There was also the fact that Saturday's bout was much more of a contest than most expected. Cotto made the match a tough one for Mayweather to win, despite his odds, despite his pristine record.

He can't retire, though, and because he is the ultimate competitor, he probably won't.

He fed the fire anyway after the fight, giving in to the speculation that he might be done. When asked for his odds of retirement, Mayweather told SI.com's Bryan Armen Graham, "More like 80-20. I've been feeling that even before this fight."

Perhaps he isn't thinking about retirement at all. Perhaps Mayweather, the ultimate showman, is simply furthering the dialogue because it's what he does best: Instigate, percolate drama.

That was never more obvious than when he told Graham, post-fight, "I could have outboxed him and moved back, made it a boring fight. But it's a recession, you guys spent your hard-earned money to see me, so I said f— it: Let me give you guys what you paid for."

And there's still one more item on the docket the fans want that Mayweather will make every effort to give them before he retires.

Until that happens—or until he exhausts every possible option to make it happen—he won't give up.