There is really no opponent Floyd Mayweather could have chosen for what he says will be his final bout on Sept. 12 who would have been greeted with excitement or satisfied the majority of boxing fans.

The only one who could possibly have generated large-scale enthusiasm as a Mayweather opponent was Gennady Golovkin, the WBA and interim WBC middleweight champ and one of boxing’s best finishers.

By Tuesday, however, when Mayweather announced that he’d face Andre Berto at the MGM Grand in a Showtime pay-per-view bout, Golovkin had already signed to face David Lemieux in October.

Mayweather is 38, and wasn’t going up to middleweight at this stage of his career. It was never realistic, and many boxing people, even those unaffiliated with Mayweather, say not fighting Golovkin was a wise move.

View photos You can't debate how successful Floyd Mayweather has been during his career. (AFP) More

So Mayweather’s choices were really limited to welterweights and, perhaps, super welterweights.

He could have chosen a rematch with either Miguel Cotto, whom he defeated in 2012, or Canelo Alvarez, whom he bested in 2013. They are, though, well down the road toward negotiating a fight with each other for Cotto’s WBC middleweight championship.

And then there were the welterweight options such as Keith Thurman, Tim Bradley, Amir Khan, Shawn Porter, Jessie Vargas or Kell Brook.

There would have been widespread complaints about any of them.

In choosing Berto, he selected perhaps the worst option, picking the guy who has done the least. Berto has hit the lottery without a single notable victory over an elite fighter.

There was, predictably, widespread consternation among hardcore boxing fans about the selection, and they took to social media in droves to complain. They indicated they preferred either the Cotto-Alvarez pay-per-view, which is expected to be Nov. 21, or the Golovkin-Lemieux pay-per-view, which will be on Oct. 17, to Mayweather-Berto.

It also raises the question in the minds of some about the health of boxing if there is such a unanimous dislike for the final bout of the sport’s biggest star.

It makes sense, on the surface, because certainly Mayweather generates more boxing talk than any other fighter.

But it misses a larger point.

Just think back to about 10 years ago. On Nov. 19, 2005, Mayweather fought Sharmba Mitchell in Portland, Ore., on HBO in what would turn out to be his last non-pay-per-view fight.

In his debut at welterweight, Mayweather was his usual excellent self and stopped Mitchell, a former 140-pound world champion, in the sixth round.

At that point, Mayweather was clearly the best pound-for-pound fighter in the world, though he was far from a unanimous choice. But it was laughable to regard him as boxing’s biggest attraction, as he clearly is today.

View photos Few would claim Andre Berto is a boxing star. (Getty Images) More

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