BJ Flores: “It just seems like Floyd Mayweather always has a reason not to fight Manny Pacquiao”

Cruiserweight contender BJ Flores whose career was stunted by promotional issues and inactivity has made a move up the ranks in 2014, fighting 3 times, including a third round knockout win this past Wednesday on the undercard of Taylor-Soliman. Flores’ career move seems to be in part to his decision to sign with powerful boxing advisor Al Haymon, and it seems the 35 year old might find himself getting a title shot in 2015.

In part 2 of my interview with BJ Flores, I talk with him about his other successful career, that being an analyst for NBC sports. Flores gives his views on Mayweather Jr’s most recent win, and where he thinks boxing P4P king should go next. Flores also talks about a potential Mayweather-Pacquiao fight and if he thinks we will finally see it in 2015. Additionally ‘El Peligroso’ talks about the upcoming Anthony Mundine vs. Sergey Rabchenko bout. Here is what BJ Flores has to say.

Robert Brown: Floyd Mayweather recently got a win over Marcos Maidana in their rematch. What did you think of the fight and who do you expect Floyd to be fighting in the future?

BJ Flores: The fight with Maidana, I think it was courageous of him to take the rematch. He won the first fight but it was a competitive fight. Floyd’s a great, great fighter, he’s very good, he does a lot of things really good but honestly in the last fight, I know he won the fight, but I wasn’t too impressed because every time Maidana got inside or got close, Floyd would openly grab him. He wouldn’t just hold him one or two times, he would grab him every single time and Kenny Bayless would just call break.

It’s one thing when there’s occasional holding in a fight, but it’s another thing when every time the other fighter gets close in punching range, Floyd would grab him and Kenny Bayless wouldn’t let him work out of it and he called break. It just made the fight not very fun to watch, it was kind of boring. A lot of fights when the guys get in close, they work and that’s a big part of boxing, the inside game, getting position, learning how to get out of position, not just grabbing your opponent and letting the ref call break every single time.

I wasn’t too happy, it wasn’t very exciting and I don’t think people are gonna continue to pay $65 every time Floyd fights if all his fights are like that. Not to mention that Canelo Alvarez is gonna start fighting on those same dates. I think it’s really, really gonna hurt Floyd’s business because he’s an exciting fighter.

Even though Floyd is better, Canelo is still a very exciting fighter and he’s gonna steal a lot of those people that buy Floyd’s fights, especially when Floyd’s fighting people that don’t generate a lot of interest. Unless Floyd fights a main guy — which I don’t even know who a main guy is right now, besides Manny Pacquiao. Unless he fights a main guy, I don’t see how he’s really gonna do the numbers like he’s used to doing, that’s just my personal opinion

Robert Brown: The fact that Floyd’s last few fights have been under the 1 million pay-per-view mark, do you think this increases the chance of him fighting Pacquiao now?

BJ Flores: I don’t know, it just seems like he’s always has a reason not to fight Pacquiao. He’s always got a reason, I don’t know what it is. In the beginning I kind of supported it as far as all the steroid testing and all those kinds of things that weren’t completely ironed out with all the details as far as how the testing was gonna go. I supported that, it made sense to me that, “If Manny doesn’t want to do random testing, then okay I’m not gonna fight somebody who doesn’t want to get random testing.”

Now it seems like there’s a lot of other reasons as to why he doesn’t want to fight Pacquiao. There’s always reasons why he doesn’t want to fight him. I think at this point in Floyd’s career, he doesn’t really want to fight anybody that he’s not gonna have complete control over on the promotional side. And that’s fine, he’s earned that but unfortunately for him, the pay-per-view buys are starting to reflect that not everybody supports it as much as they used to.

I heard the numbers for the last fight wasn’t like 900,000 or 800,000, it was 772,000 buys. That’s quite a few under a million, that’s three quarters of a million, not a million. The buys are going down, the people are starting to recognize that and the style of fighting as far as not being entertaining. People aren’t wanting to pay $65 of their hard earned money on a fight that every time they get in a clinch he’s just gonna grab him.

With saying all that, I still think Floyd is a great amazing fighter, he’s the best ticket seller in the show but I think the game of boxing is always evolving, it’s always changing and right now that’s the change we’re starting to see, that Floyd just can’t fight whoever he wants and sell a million anymore like he used to.

Robert Brown: I want to get your views on an upcoming fight. Anthony Mundine is going to be fighting Sergey Rabchenko on November the 12th. How do you think Mundine is gonna do against someone who is young and hungry like Rabchenko?

BJ Flores: I’m not sure. It’s gonna be interesting to see how Mundine comes back after the violent loss to Joshua Clottey, and see if he’s lost a lot or if he’s regrouped. Normally at this age it’s tough to come back after a violent beating like that. I think more so it will be interesting for Mundine to see how he responds to the beating he took and see if he’s still got anything left.

Robert Brown: One last question, is there anything left this year from NBC Sports?

BJ Flores: Yeah, we have a date on October 18th and we have another one on November 8th. We got two more shows, they’re both gonna be good. They’re featuring Steve Cunningham and Amir Mansour, two good heavyweight fighters. It’s gonna be exciting, and for next year, who knows what the future holds. I’m ready for whatever.