00:01Deja vu. A fever dream. Or maybe something worse.
00:0549-year-old Floyd Mayweather Jr. and 47-year-old Manny Pacquiao are running it back.
00:11Yes, professionally. So yes, this somehow counts as the biggest story in boxing.
00:17It shouldn't be a huge surprise. The announcement landed just days after Mayweather teased another comeback
00:23following his upcoming 2026 exhibition with the 58-year-old Mike Tyson
00:27alongside a new multi-fight deal with CSI Sports.
00:34I already fought and beat Manny once, Mayweather proclaimed.
00:37This time will be the same result. So why are we doing this again?
00:42Mayweather officially retired in 2017 at the age of 40
00:46after stopping Conor McGregor to finish his professional boxing career with a perfect 50-0 record.
00:52Since then, he's stayed busy competing in exhibitions with anyone from undersized kickboxers,
00:57to YouTuber millionaires,
01:00to mob-adjacent monstrosities like John Gotti III.
01:04Seriously, it's all been for the money, because it certainly did nothing for anyone's dignity.
01:13Pacquiao originally retired after losing to your Denis Ugas in 2021
01:17before returning in 2025 to take the WPC champion Mario Barrios to a majority draw.
01:24With a record of 62-8-3, he's now chasing history by becoming the first man to tarnish Mayweather's unblemished
01:32record.
01:34Before that, though, he faces Ruslan Provodnikov, 42, in an April exhibition bout in Las Vegas.
01:43I want Floyd to live with the one loss on his professional record and always remember who gave it to
01:48him,
01:48Pacquiao said in his statement.
01:50The fans have waited long enough. They deserve this rematch.
01:53But what do the fans do to deserve this?
01:57The first time the two met was back in May of 2015,
02:00when Mayweather outpointed Pacquiao in a megafight that famously failed to deliver.
02:05It was a tactical snoozefest that was five years too late
02:08and evolved a diminished Pacquiao nursing a shoulder injury that required immediate surgery.
02:13But Mayweather Pacquiao won, made absurd amounts of money.
02:19The bout pulled in 4.6 million pay-per-view buys in the U.S. alone,
02:24generated over $410 million and smashed gate records with $72.2 million.
02:32While the UFC held an event at the $2.3 billion sphere in 2024,
02:37this will be its first boxing headliner,
02:39and it's almost guaranteed to be an even bigger spectacle.
02:44Due to the fight landing on Netflix, there will be no pay-per-view numbers at all,
02:47but there will be 325 million subscribers who could tune in this September 19.
02:53Or they could watch just about anything else.
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