By Chris Williams: Floyd Mayweather Jr. reportedly told Sports Center today that he won’t give Manny Pacquiao a 50-50 deal for a May 5th fight. I think that sounds right, because didn’t Pacquiao already say he’d accept less than Mayweather to get the fight made?
What happened with that? Did Pacquiao change his mind, because he’s now telling Mayweather that he’ll fight him if he gets a 50-50 split of the revenue. Pacquiao needs to give Mayweather counter offer of something like 48% that he would accept and then go from there.
But knowing these guys, they’ll probably now move on and continue fighting Top Rank stable fighters. I can already see that happening. Arum is having the huge 40,000 seat Manny arena built on the Las Vegas strip and he’s going to need to fill it with fans. He’s not going to stick around to negotiate with Mayweather over percentages. That’s just not been the history for him.
When things hit a snag, Arum moves Pacquiao quickly to one of his own fighters like Joshua Clottey and he does well with in house fight. I doubt that they’ll fill that big 40,000 seat Manny arena unless they get someone like Miguel Cotto or Juan Manuel Marquez, but I’ll let Arum worry about that.
He’s probably confident that he can fill it with Timothy Bradley as Pacquiao’s opponent. I figure you’ll be able to hear a pin drop if Bradley or Lamont Peterson get picked out for Pacquiao. But the beauty about those guys is that they won’t ask for a 50-50 split and Pacquiao and Arum will get the big money, while those guys will accept the much smaller chunk. The Manny arena obviously won’t get filled but there will be enough gullible people willing to pay $55 on pay per view that Pacquiao and Arum will still make a killing even without Mayweather.
Comments are closed.