IS THIS THE END FOR MAYWEATHER?!

VIDEO: WATCH AS THE INCREDIBLE  FLOYD MAYWEATHER FIGHTS ANDRE BERTO THIS WEEKEND! WILL HE QUIT OR WILL HE BE BACK?

FTW: Is Mayweather really going to retire?

But why would we believe it? Mayweather said he wouldn’t be back when he left the first time, in 2008, only to return for the biggest paydays of his career. He says it’s always been just about the boxing, except for when he says it’s mainly about the business.

While trying to talk this fight up as the kind of competitive contest most assume it won’t be, Mayweather points to the fact that Berto’s trainer Virgil Hunter is good enough to make a huge difference, before saying that trainers can’t win fights.
He said it wasn’t personal and that Berto deserved respect, but then made a sly dig by saying he had spies in his rival’s camp.

But what if it the retirement stuff is actually true? It would all be a rather sad ending; a fight that lacks genuine interest and is struggling to sell out, and an overwhelming lack of the kind of career-ending publicity most great athletes are afforded.
Mayweather isn’t Muhammad Ali great, as he has claimed, but that doesn’t matter. Derek Jeter wasn’t Babe Ruth great. Jeff Gordon isn’t Richard Petty great.

But those recent retirees got legendary sendoffs, the kind of farewell that felt like a celebration and was, at each step, a genuine show of appreciation of legacy. Mayweather’s farewell doesn’t even feel like a farewell at all, probably because it isn’t.

Maybe he doesn’t care, maybe the cushion of cash is enough to soften the implied rejection. But maybe it does sting. And maybe that is reason enough to carry on, if he wasn’t already planning to.

“Let’s not forget that I was the one six years ago who insisted on elevating the level of drug testing for all my fights. As a result, there is more drug testing and awareness of its importance in the sport of boxing today than ever before. I am very proud to be a clean athlete and will continue to champion the cause.”

Boxing’s pound-for-pound champion is indeed a master of rebutting his own assertions, sometimes in the same breath, yet perhaps never moreso than in the build-up to what he promises will be the final fight of his career.

That comes Saturday night against Andre Berto at the MGM Grand Garden Arena, what appears to be a one-sided clash before Mayweather heads off into retirement for the second, and almost certainly not the final time.

“I sometimes contradict myself,” shrugged Floyd Mayweather, back in late April, days before the so-called “Fight of the Century” that, well, wasn’t. “Whoop de do.”

The United States Anti-Doping Agency on Thursday also disputed that Mayweather violated any rules, saying the boxer applied for and was granted an exemption for the infusion.

“As already confirmed by the USADA statement, I did not commit any violations of the Nevada or USADA drug testing guidelines,” Mayweather said in a statement. “I follow and have always followed the rules of Nevada and USADA, the gold standard of drug testing.”

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