Comments Thread For: Floyd Mayweather Jr. and the End of The U.S. Era

[-Kev-]

How is 34 the tail end of a career for Andre Ward? Ward only turned 31 years of age, has only been a professional for a decade (with easily two of those years where he wasn't taking any physical punishment), only had 120 amateur fights, and seems to live a clean life.

You add that Ward's style, though well equipped to take advantage of his current physical gifts, is built to age extremely well, basically allowing for him to compete for however long he wants.

Have no doubt that Ward likely has another 6-8 prime years to work through, before starting a 10-year decline (slippage starts to set in, but Ward's veteran craft and trips/traps that he's picked up will keep him competitive against all but the p4p fighters at 175/200); doubt that Ward is ever 45 years old, still taking punches, but simply speaking on ability at that point.

Ward has the style to fight top level opponents until he is 40+. But his injuries lead me to believe he won't fight for very long. I don't think this past hiatus was his last, it's possible that he gets injured again and sits down for a while.

[Scipio2009]

Dubai & Macao,
No tax in Dubai & I believe low tax in Macao.
If an American citizen fights abroad, he will still have to pay federal tax. Manny didn't have to pay US taxes if he fought in Macao.

I work in Tokyo but have to pay both Japanese & some US tax too.

Pacquiao didn't have to pay US taxes, but he still owed 35% plus the VAT in the PI (now without any offsets from a US tax bill).

As long as you're an American citizen, you owe a tax bill to the IRS (with the bill offset by taxes paid in countries that the US has tax treaties with); kinda how things are.

[Scipio2009]

Ward has the style to fight top level opponents until he is 40+. But his injuries lead me to believe he won't fight for very long. I don't think this past hiatus was his last, it's possible that he gets injured again and sits down for a while.

fair enough. I personally don't think the injury risk, going forward, is as high as you think it is (especially with Ward having taken care of that shoulder issue finally).

Outside of Ward blowing out a knee, I see him fighting until he no longer wants to fight (a la Floyd, on top of the game and the eyeball test having you think that he still has 1-2 years of top level ability left.