Dream fight? Dream on

What would make Floyd Mayweather Jr. fight Manny Pacquiao?

Nothing. End of story.

But suppose we can get into his mind and see what he’s thinking? We’d see three things:

1) Money. Mayweather is not called that for nothing. This is money already tucked under his belt—$350 million in career earnings by Forbes estimates.

2) More money. Throw in someone who is essentially his own promoter, manager, PR man and financial planner and you get the kind of numbers other pro athletes can only dream of. Never mind that the man is well seeded across the investment landscape.

3) Even more money. Four fights are on the horizon, none too trivial nor too much for his taste. That should fit in with his short-term financial planning. Mayweather was guaranteed $41.5 million against Canelo Alvarez in his last fight. All in, the amount could top the monster payday ($45 million) he received for making light work of Miguel Cotto last year.

Pacquiao is the last thing on his mind.

* * *

Mayweather has little interest in a Pacquiao fight because he thinks he has nothing to gain from it, much less prove by it. He has laid claim to the world’s best pound-for-pound fighter and insinuated himself to the hallowed ranks of boxing greats largely unchallenged, even if Filipinos—and countless other people—insist their man is the best there is in the business.

If Mayweather has any special interest in a fight, it would be to defend, if not grow, his legacy. And why wouldn’t you if you had an unblemished record in 45 fights in a sport notorious for epic fails.

Pacquiao can’t help him there. Mayweather knows that if there’s anyone capable of stopping the runaway success that he is and tarnishing his legacy, it’s Pacquiao.

You’d get a sense of how badly the Mayweather camp wants to talk down a Pacquiao fight if you listened to his father-trainer. In a post-mortem of Pacquiao’s bell-to-bell destruction of Brandon Rios in Macau on Sunday, the elder Mayweather put it down to a good fighter beating the hell out of a bad one. He called Pacquiao undeserving of a shot at his son.

Like it or not, Pacquiao is not quite the imposing figure he once was. Back-to-back-losses in his previous two outings diminished his currency.

Many thought one was a fluke, but who can forget how Juan Manuel Marquez knocked him cold in Las Vegas last year? Or how trainer Freddie Roach famously let slip that the Filipino should retire if he lost to Rios?

* * *

In the afterglow of the Macau triumph, small embers are beginning to catch fire over a Mayweather-Pacquiao clash. But it’s a slow burn for Pacquiao himself.

“My job is to fight and I’ll fight anyone who will fight me,” he told reporters. That’s not saying a lot about the chances of a Mayweather fight. It was promoter Bob Arum who predictably talked about it in so many words.

The idea makes perfect sense. That’s why it’s resonating with many boxing fans who will pay any price to see it and stirring the sport’s commercial fringes. Suddenly, everybody wants in on a potential windfall of related earnings—from TV networks to merchandisers and venue operators. Most of all, it raises the tantalizing prospect of the richest fight in boxing history.

Pacquiao will want it but Mayweather decides.

And as much as we’d like to see them mix it up in the ring, they’ll end up farther apart.

But years from now, when they look back on their glory days, they’ll agree on one thing—that their greatest fight was the one they never had.

(Reggie Amigo is a veteran sports editor who is now based in Hong Kong. He edited newspaper sections of The Hong Kong Standard and later South China Morning Post.)