By Chris Williams: Trainer Freddie Roach still believes a fight can be put together between his fighter Manny Pacquiao and Floyd Mayweather Jr. next year. In an article by Bradley Cooney at the Examiner.com, Roach says “I can’t believe that his fight [Mayweather-Pacquiao] isn’t happening. Maybe with Don King something can get done, with him anything can happen. We agreed to everything then Mayweather said no negotiations were going on, and that busted in his face. That leaves one thing. Mayweather is scared to lose. I think ultimately the fight will happen.” It may happen but there’s probably to have to some concessions made by Pacquiao before it happens.
Roach says that they agreed on everything, but all we’ve heard thus far is from Roach and the Top Rank side and not Golden Boy Promotions and Mayweather. Mayweather wanted the full random blood tests. From what we’ve been hearing, Pacquiao didn’t agree to that and was still somewhere beyond 14 days. Since they’re not saying precisely what the terms were, we’re left with nothing. However, I remain skeptical that Pacquiao had agreed to everything that Mayweather wanted.
We’ll see in the future. However, Arum certainly isn’t making things easier for Pacquiao for future negotiations by selecting less than popular fighters to face Pacquiao over and over. The last time Pacquiao fought, Arum selected Joshua Clottey from his Top Rank stable to fight Pacquiao. It was clearly a bad pick and mediocre pay per view number of 700,000 buys bore this out. Now Arum has selected another Top Rank fighter from his table Antonio Margarito, and already boxing fans are pretty much united in their dissatisfaction with this pick.
Arum is sticking with his selection of Margarito despite the criticism and his difficulties in getting a boxing license in the United States. Time will tell whether Arum is right or wrong. He’ll have a huge smile on his face if the Pacquiao-Margarito bout brings in 1 million PPV buys. This will make things much easier to negotiate a fight with Mayweather in the future, because it will be harder for Mayweather to point to Pacquiao’s lower PPV numbers as reasoning why Mayweather should get a bigger split.
However, if Arum is wrong again, and the fight brings in roughly the same numbers as the Pacquiao-Clottey fight, then Mayweather will be in the drivers’ seat for the Pacquiao vs. Mayweather negotiations. This will make the fight all but impossible to be put together, because Pacquiao will still want at least a 50-50 deal, even though his lower PPV numbers won’t show that he’s worth what he’s asking. This is why Arum, instead of just looking to put Pacquiao in with his non-popular Top Rank fighters, should be looking for the biggest star he can find in every fight and not just of them. I don’t see the Margarito fight being a good one for Pacquiao in terms of the money he can make compared to some of the other fights he could be in.
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