Undefeated pound-for-pound king, who told ESPN’s Stephen A. Smith via text on Tuesday that he would be willing to postpone his planned September retirement to rematch Manny Pacquiao next year, has changed his mind.
“Did I text Stephen A. Smith and say I will fight him again? Yeah, but I change my mind. At this particular time, no, because he’s a sore loser and a coward,” Mayweather told Showtime’s Jim Gray in a taped interview that will air Saturday evening on Showtime at 9 p.m. ET) during the network’s replay of last Saturday night’s Super- fight from the MGM Grand in Las Vegas.
Mayweather was unimpressed with Pacquiao’s attitude following the fight.
“If you lost, accept the loss and say, ‘Mayweather, you were the better fighter,’” Mayweather said.
Mayweather won a unanimous decision in the highly-anticipated welterweight unification mega-fight, a with the fight going down as the most lucrative in the sport’s history.
After the fight, Pacquiao revealed that he entered the ring with a right shoulder injury that hindered his performance. On Wednesday in Los Angeles, Pacquiao underwent arthroscopic surgery under the tutelage of Dr. Neal ElAttrache, who described the injury as a “significant tear” to the eight-division world champion’s rotator cuff.
Pacquiao will be out of the ring for nine months to a year, but Mayweather, who planned to fight once more in September in the final bout of a six-fight deal he signed with Showtime in early 2013, told Smith he would fight Pacquiao in a rematch next spring once the Filipino superstar he had healed.
However, Mayweather (48-0), was furious that Pacquiao (57-6-2) and team did not give any credit to Mayweather for his performance, but instead blamed his mediocre performance on a shoulder injury, which Top Rank, founder and CEO Bob Arum, claims has been present since 2008, which seems far-fetched to most sane people, and Mayweather isn’t buying it.
“I’m not going to buy into the bull—- and I don’t want the public to buy into the bull—-,” Mayweather said. “He lost; he knows he lost, I lost a lot of respect for him after all of this.”
When Gray asked if Mayweather noticed anything that would give him the impression that Pacquiao was injured, Mayweather said, “Absolutely not. He was fast. His left hand was fast. His right hand was fast, and he was throwing them both fast and strong. Excuses, excuses.”
After the fight, in an interview with HBO’s Max Kellerman, Mayweather admitted that he was hurt going into the fight, but made no excuses. As he has done throughout his career, he found a way to win.
