Floyd Mayweather says rematch with Manny Pacquiao is happening this year

Mayweather (50-0, 27 KOs) earned a unanimous-decision win over Pacquiao when they first met in May 2015. He earned a guaranteed purse of $100m for the fight but was reported to have brought home at least twice that amount.

Afterward, Pacquiao blamed an injured right shoulder for his underwhelming performance, saying he’d hurt it during a sparring session approximately three weeks before the fight. He underwent corrective surgery to repair a torn rotator cuff four days after the bout.

The long-awaited welterweight title unification bout generated more than 4.4m pay-per-view buys, nearly doubling the previous record of 2.48m for the 2007 fight between Mayweather and Oscar De La Hoya.

It also yielded more than $400m in domestic pay-per-view revenue to almost triple the $150m generated by Mayweather’s win over Canelo Alvarez in 2013.

The American has fought twice since then: a lopsided points win over Andre Berto in September 2015 and a 10th-round knockout of Conor McGregor in August 2017.

Pacquiao (60-7-2), an eight-division champion who is serving as a senator his native Philippines, is coming off a sixth-round stoppage of Lucas Matthysse for the WBA’s ‘regular’ welterweight title.

“I have the belt,” Pacquiao said in the video, to which Mayweather responded: “I’m going to take it from you like I did before. We gonna take the belt. We gonna get the payday. And I don’t want no shoulder excuses.”