By Chris Williams: Bob Arum of Top Rank says negotiations between his company and Floyd Mayweather Jr. for a mega fight against Manny Pacquiao can begin as soon as one of Mayweather’s representatives contact him or one of his people from Top Rank. Arum says he wants to make the fight, but he’s still waiting on a call from Mayweather’s people to start the ball in motion to put the fight together.
Arum told USA Today “What, is Mayweather going to fight Amir Khan? Who gives a (expletive)? We’ve announced we’re willing to make anything happen. Now somebody has got to contact us so we can sit down and explore how it can happen. We’re ready to sit down and see if a deal can be reached. Floyd or his representatives, of course.”
The question is why is the experienced 82-year-old Arum waiting for Mayweather’s reps to contact him. If I’m Pacquiao, I would hope that my promoter would be assertive enough to pick up a phone and call Mayweather’s reps to start negotiating. Why is Arum acting like it’s them that has to make the phone call instead of himself? When I hear Arum taking about how someone needs to call him or he doesn’t know the number to call to start negotiations, that just makes me think that he doesn’t want the fight.
Look at it this way: If Pacquiao gets schooled by Mayweather, it’ll likely decrease Pacquiao’s earning power in his PPV bouts, because a big part of the mystique behind Pacquiao is that he can beat Mayweather. If fans find out that Pacquiao can’t beat Mayweather, then he’ll be seen as #2 and it’s not good to be #2. But if Arum chooses not to make that phone call to start negotiations or if he says he doesn’t know who to call, the fight will never get made. In the meantime, Arum can continue to match Pacquiao up against his own fighters like Tim Bradley.
Mayweather will likely fight Amir Khan next or someone in the same class on May 3rd. If that fight doesn’t bring in huge pay-per-view numbers then it’s very likely that Mayweather will be looking to fight Pacquiao in the 2nd half of 2014 if only to maximize the money he can make with what’s left of his Showtime/CBS contract. He’s got 4 fights left with them, and Showtime Vice President Stephen Espinoza wants to see the Mayweather-Pacquiao fight take place as part of one of those four fights before Mayweather’s contract runs out.
Ideally, it would be great if 2 of those fights couldn’t be Mayweather-Pacquiao fights, but the only way that would happen if they the first fight was a close affair. It’s doubtful that Pacquiao will be able to fight Mayweather competitively because he’s so far behind Mayweather in terms of skills. We saw that with how easily Mayweather beat Juan Manuel Marquez in 2009. This is the same fighter that Pacquiao has struggled against in four of their previous fights together, and yet Mayweather beat Marquez easily.
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