by Tom Drury: The constant debates, reasoning, ifs and if nots surrounding a Floyd Mayweather Manny Paquiao fight are to say the least painstaking for fans of the fight game, boxing pundits and fellow fighters who want nothing more than to see this fight take place. These two fighters are one and two respectively in the pound for pound list and the two greatest fighters of this era without doubt.

This fight has been in the making since 2009, many obstacles have stopped this mega-fight from happening, namely Paquiao outright refusing olympic style blood testing then wanting cut off dates for the rbt, Paquiao also wanted a 50/50 purse split which is not justifiable due to the huge pay per view numbers Mayweather generates in his fights.

Mayweather has come along way since his time as a Top Rank stable fighter most notably in the business side of boxing, he is his own boss and calls the shots when it comes to his career path with the help of boxing supremo Al Haymon and a fantastic team of people that he surrounds himself with.

Manny Paquiao is without question the second biggest star in world boxing great PPV numbers, great fan base and great fighter. I am a big admirer of Manny Paquiao but I feel his business sense is questionable, been the crossover superstar that he is, this fighter should not and does not need Bob Arum to promote his fights.

Pacquiao is coming to the end of his career, the sensible move would be for him to end his contract with Top Rank and co-promote this would be mega-fight with Floyd Mayweather in doing so this would give Paquiao the biggest purse of his career most probably 20-30 million more than he would get fighting Mayweather under the Top Rank name.

So this begs the question, “why has Paquiao signed a contract extension with Arum?”. Quite frankly the reasoning for this fight not happening is a farce to us die hard boxing fans but step inside Floyd Mayweather’s shoes for a second. Bob Arum would also make untold millions in a Mayweather-Paquiao fight. In principal as a man Mayweather is not willing to add to Arum’s wealth. Unless the fallout with Arum and Mayweather is smoothed out this fight will not happen. As a fan I feel this fight must happen in 2013 if not it will lose momentum both fighters will be over the hill and the boxing world once again will be denied the spectacle of two greats meeting inside the squared circle.