Floyd Mayweather's Next Fight: Best Opponents for Potential Next Bout

Floyd Mayweather Jr. did exactly as expected Saturday night and got his record to 49-0 with a dominant unanimous decision over Andre Berto in Las Vegas, which officially gets us to the question we’d been pondering throughout the five-week sojourn to the MGM Grand.

OK, so now what?

Though the 38-year-old insisted all the way to fight night that the dance with the thrice-beaten Floridian would mark the end of his own 19-year ring career, you’d have had better luck finding a gambling-averse teetotaler on the Strip than anyone who really believed Mayweather was done.

So rather than reflecting back on a career that’s yielded titles in five classes and a sure-fire trip to Canastota, we’ll go ahead and follow the herd in pondering whom he’ll meet when he returns—not if.

As with nearly every other elite fighter these days, the paths to truly big matchups for Mayweather are obstructed by promotional alliances, feuds and other requisite boxing silliness. But while those barriers can be insurmountable for others, the reality with Money is that his mere presence on marquees—and the revenue it generates—brings warring parties to negotiable common ground.

With that as a preface, we put together a list of the most interesting/realistic/worthwhile foes that could share the dais if the return indeed occurs sometime in 2016. Click through to see what we came up with, and go right ahead and make your own suggestions via the comments.

5. Gennady Golovkin

Mark J. Terrill/Associated Press

For as long as Mayweather fights, there are going to be people who’ll insist he’s ducked big fights.

But while a resume that includes familiar names like Corrales, Castillo, Gatti, Judah, De La Hoya, Hatton, Mosley, Cotto, Alvarez and Pacquiao would seem beyond contempt, the undisputed heartthrob of the contrarian set these days is IBO/WBA middleweight champion Gennady Golovkin.

The affable Kazakhstan native has built a rabid following while compiling a 20-fight knockout streak, and he’s stoked the Mayweather fires periodically by suggesting he’d be able to come down to 154 pounds to make the fight happen.

Mayweather has shown no interest in the concept thus far and there’s no reason to believe that’ll change, but if he decides the lure of 50-0 is too great and he wants to attain it by beating the guy who’d be his biggest—literally and figuratively—competitive challenge, Golovkin’s is the name he should call.

Of course, if he were to fight Golovkin and win, the conversation would probably go to how he's ducking Sergey Kovalev. 

Chances it happens if Mayweather returns: Less than 1 percent.

What to do in the meantime: Forget it. There's a better chance he stays retired.

4. Keith Thurman/Shawn Porter

They’re different fighters and they might be better served by fighting each other for consensus “heir to the throne” acclaim, but if Mayweather indeed decides to finally face one of the 147-pound division’s young guns, it’d have to be one of these guys.

Thurman holds the WBA’s bogus “regular” title beneath Mayweather’s “super” status, and he’s been increasingly vocal in suggesting he’d rather go ahead and topple the old man himself rather than simply waiting for the king to abdicate. On the other side, Porter can claim to have earned the match via the Little Brother Theory after he whipped Mayweather wannabe Adrien Broner earlier this year.

The first man to beat Broner was Marcos Maidana, and he was rewarded with a Mayweather shot five months later.

And though Porter himself hasn’t veered too far from his soft-spoken persona to discuss a Floyd fight, his father and trainer, Ken, isn’t nearly so reserved in claiming his protege is ready for his close-up.

"We're not going to drive down the street and bam on the guy's door and beg him to fight us. He's going to have to man up," the elder Porter told CBSSports.com. “He's going to have to decide if this is the way he's going to end his career—on a spectacular high note—or if he's going to go out against a quiet fighter who's not going to give him too much resistance.”

Chances it happens if Mayweather returns: 5 percent.

What to do in the meantime: Don’t hold your breath.

3. Amir Khan

Julio Cortez/Associated Press

How many near misses can one guy have?

Amir Khan has been claiming status as a viable Mayweather foil for years, a claim that gained some legitimacy when he “won” a Mayweather-orchestrated fan poll to determine his next opponent in 2014.

Problem was, Mayweather went ahead and chose runner-up Marcos Maidana anyway, and when that fight turned out far more competitive than anyone expected, Khan was forced to suffer through a rematch. Then, once the Argentine was finally vanquished, the fight with Manny Pacquiao that many had decided would never happen finally did—leaving Khan out in the cold for historic reasons.

Some have suggested he missed a chance to be No. 49 because he criticized Mayweather too much, but the nearly unanimous disgust prompted by the selection of Berto at least makes Khan seem like a middling make-up offering. Better than many options, not as good as others.  

Chances it happens if Mayweather returns: 10 percent.

What to do in the meantime: Set up a Priceline account just in case.

2. Miguel Cotto/Canelo Alvarez

Damian Dovarganes/Associated Press

It’s the perfect storm of competitive convenience.

Not only will the winner of November’s bout between Miguel Cotto and Canelo Alvarez have a legitimate—if not exactly popular—claim to the lineal middleweight championship, but the reality for Mayweather the morning after the fight will be that both men are guys he’s already beaten.

Put that together and the chance to not only get to 50-0, but capture a sixth weight-class belt along the way, seems like it’d be awfully hard to pass by.

His bout with Cotto at 154 pounds in 2012 was one of the rare ones in his career where he walked away bloody, and the consensus these days is that the Puerto Rican is a more formidable foe now that he’s been reinvented by Freddie Roach. Meanwhile, though the Alvarez fight was close to a whitewash in the eyes of everyone by CJ Ross in 2013, the Mexican—if he beats Cotto—will have gone a long way toward making people believe a second match could look far different than the first.

Chances it happens if Mayweather returns: 15 percent.

What to do in the meantime: Request the time off from work, just in case.

1. Manny Pacquiao

John Locher/Associated Press

The overriding reason it made sense for Mayweather and Manny Pacquiao to finally meet last May won’t have changed too much by the time next May rolls around. No matter where they go and no matter what they say, neither one of them will ever make as much money fighting anyone else as they will fighting each other.

And regardless of the backlash following their $100 competitive yawner and so many people’s insistence that they’ll not be fooled again, the idea that a Mayweather-Pacquiao II would not draw a full house in Las Vegas and at least a million or two more via pay-per-view is self-righteous naivete.

Some people believe Pacquiao was genuinely hampered by the shoulder injury he claimed to have aggravated in the early going. And the disclosure that Mayweather received a dubious IV the night before the fight no doubt has others thinking that without the saline and vitamins, who knows?

Couple those concepts with the reality that both men still possess the rare mixture of mainstream profile and pound-for-pound stardom, and it’ll almost be more surprising if Mayweather doesn’t call on his Filipino foil to go for 50-0 than if he does.

Chances it happens if Mayweather returns: 70 percent.

What to do in the meantime: Book your hotel and flights.