Floyd Mayweather Jr. says he’s ready to fight Manny Pacquiao in December for WBA welterweight title

Another chance meeting between Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Manny Pacquiao has inspired Mayweather to post, “I’m coming back,” on his Instagram account.

The unbeaten, now 41-year-old Mayweather was at an event in Tokyo on Saturday when he and Pacquiao crossed paths.

Pacquiao (60-7-2, 39 knockouts) won the World Boxing Assn. secondary welterweight belt in July by knocking out Lucas Matthysse in Malaysia, and he told the Los Angeles Times previously that he was seeking an early December return bout, with his first option former Wild Card Boxing Club stablemate Amir Khan of England.

Mayweather (50-0, 27 knockouts) and Pacquiao came face to face in Tokyo, and the exchange was captured on video by both Pacquiao’s friend and boxing manager Sean Gibbons and a Mayweather associate.

“I’m coming back in December. I’m taking your belt,” Mayweather told a smiling Pacquiao. “I’ll beat you like I did before and I don’t want to hear that your shoulder hurts.”

Gibbons said Pacquiao was in town to endorse a product while Mayweather was invited to the event where they met, a three-day rave similar to the Electric Daisy Carnival staged in the U.S.

“Manny was asked to come by for a minute to the VIP section where Floyd was and we heard Floyd’s boys yelling, ‘Easy work, easy work,’” Gibbons said.

After a while, according to Gibbons, Pacquiao said, “‘I’m not listening to that.’ He went over to Floyd and told him, ‘My shoulder’s good, there’ll be no excuses this time and [you’re going to be] 50-1.’”

Their 2015 fight came about after an unexpected meeting at a Miami Heat game, where the two saw each other across the court. That fight, which produced a record 4.6 million pay-per-view buys and more than $600 million in total revenue, featured the sharper, faster Mayweather defeating Pacquiao, who complained afterward that his effort was muted by a shoulder injury he sustained training that required post-fight surgery.

Mayweather last fought in August 2017, stopping then-UFC champion Conor McGregor by 10th-round technical knockout at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas.

While Pacquiao has told The Times that he wants to return to fight in the U.S. in his next bout, he owes a substantial tax debt here, so international bidders might emerge to attempt to host the bout.

The unbeaten Mayweather prefers fighting in Las Vegas, where he’s based, and he’s armed with the power to demand the bout take place here.

lance.pugmire@latimes.com

Twitter: @latimespugmire

UPDATES:

11:25 a.m.: This article was updated with more details about the encounter in Tokyo between Mayweather and Pacquiao.

This article was originally published at 10:55 a.m.