By Scott Gilfoid: I can’t tell you how happy I am. Finally, Ricky Hatton is standing on his hind legs and showing some backbone by getting ready to walk away from his May 2nd fight with Manny Pacquiao. I’m proud of him. He should have done it a long time ago as soon as Pacquiao came up with the ridiculous request for the larger 60-40 split instead of the 50-50, which the two had originally been the agreed upon split at the start of negotiations.
The word now is that Pacquiao has until Wednesday to send in the signed contract with the 50-50 split otherwise Hatton is going to scrap the fight, according to the Los Angeles Times. Hatton and his father, God Bless them, informed Richard Schaefer from Golden Boy that they’ll be moving on in another direction if the contact doesn’t get signed by Pacquiao by Wednesday, looking at potential fights against Floyd Mayweather Jr., Juan Manuel Marquez or Juan Diaz.
Neither Bob Arum, Pacquiao’s promoter nor Pacquiao’s trainer Freddie Roach have been able to convince him to wise up and take the original 50-50 purse split offer, and both are reportedly frustrated. Who can blame them? Pacquiao’s stubborn refusal to agree to the 50-50 offer is jeopardizing a fight that would have given him a huge payday in the 10s of millions of dollars. The thing of it is, he’s going to end up fighting for much less than that against other opponents.
I don’t expect Pacquiao to budge on his offer of wanting the bigger purse split by tomorrow. That’s okay. Hatton doesn’t need to lower himself any longer by being asked to accept anything less than 50%. He’s better than that. He should have scrapped this fight the same day that he heard the 60-40 business coming from Pacquiao.
Hatton can make similar money against Mayweather in a rematch, so he doesn’t need lower himself to the level of accepting 40 or 45% in a fight against Pacquiao. Frankly, I’m disappointed in Hatton for not telling Pacquiao where to get off. I’ve never been a fan of Hatton, I got to say, but I hate to see him getting screwed over when he doesn’t have to. He’s got other options and he shouldn’t have wasted as much time as he did with this whole mess. There is no problem. Either Pacquiao takes the 50-50 offer or forget it. If I was Hatton, I wouldn’t take the fight even if Pacquiao begged him to take the 50-50 deal. Forget it, he blew it. He made Hatton grovel for too long and it’s not worth it anymore.
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