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By Sean McDaniel: Undefeated Floyd Mayweather Jr. (41-0, 25 KO’s) shockingly announced that he plans on taking a couple of years off from boxing in a June 2nd YouTube video taken of him in Las Vegas while visiting a cancer patient. Mayweather, 33, repeatedly said during the interview that he plans on taking a couple of years off from boxing. Initially, Mayweather was saying he taking “a year or two” off from boxing. However, as the interview progressed, Mayweather changed it to a “couple of years” away from the sport.

This is what Mayweather had to say: “I’m taking a couple of years off away from the sport of boxing. I don’t know what the future holds for Mayweather this time particular time but I’ll probably take a couple of years off. Like I said before, I’m going to take a couple of years off. Our main focus now is the Floyd Mayweather Jr. foundation. It’s about giving back.”

It’s unclear whether Mayweather really meant what he was saying or if he was just saying this because he was taking part in visiting a cancer patient at the time. But it does remind me a lot of how when things went bad for Mayweather during his negotiations for a rematch with Oscar De La Hoya in 2008, Mayweather simply decided to retire for two years rather than take less than what he felt he deserved in the negotiations.

Could that be the reason why Mayweather might choose to retire now? It could be. It would be his way of showing passive aggression by picking up his cards and moving off into the sunset and thus not allowing Manny Pacquiao and his promotional team Top Rank the privilege of fighting him. If this was another fighter, I might just ignore this and see it as a meaningless bluff.

However, since Mayweather has done this in the past when not happy with the De La Hoya rematch negotiations, I have to say Mayweather could be very serious about this and basically moving on and forgetting the Pacquiao fight altogether. There’s little chance that the 31-year-old Pacquiao will wait for Mayweather for two years, as Pacquiao is planning on retiring after one or two more fights to start his career in politics in the Philippines.

Although technically it probably wouldn’t be much of a problem for Pacquiao, because in two years Pacquiao will be 33, the same age as Mayweather is now, but it’s doubtful that Pacquiao will want to continue fighting for that much longer just to get a shot against Mayweather.

I don’t blame Mayweather for wanting to step away from boxing right now. He just made $40 million for his impressive win over Shane Mosley on May 1st, doesn’t need any more money and probably isn’t interested in fighting unless it’s on his terms. In negotiating with a star like Pacquiao, it’s doubtful that Mayweather would ever be 100% happy with the terms because Pacquiao is about as famous as him. Mayweather would have to be willing to accept a 50-50 deal or something close to that and would have to be willing to deal with Pacquiao having a cut off for the blood testing.