By Dan Ambrose: With his 12 round unanimous decision victory over WBO welterweight champion Tim Bradley (31-1, 12 KO’s) last night in Las Vegas, Nevada, Manny Pacquiao (56-5-2, 38 KO’s) is now hunting for bigger game by offering Floyd Mayweather Jr. a fight against him for later this year in September rather than one of the two guys – Mike Alvarado or Juan Manuel Marquez – that his promoter Bob Arum has for him. Pacquiao says that his line is open for Mayweather to call him to make the fight happen.
Arum also is extending the offer to Mayweather, albeit not in the same patient manner that Pacquiao is offering the fight to him.
“The line is open, 24 hours a day, seven days a week,” Pacquiao said about Mayweather. “If he wants to fight, the fight will be on,” Pacquiao said via Fightnews.com.
What Pacquiao says might not be entirely so about a fight between them happening so easily. As we’ve seen in the past, when Mayweather has shown interested in the fight with Pacquiao, Arum has had things that needed to happen before a fight could take place, such as an outdoor stadium needing to be built. Arum also tends to schedule Pacquiao quickly after his fights, and the window for Mayweather to get a fight against Pacquiao is a very short one when it comes to getting his next fight.
For Mayweather to realistically get a fight against Pacquiao, he’d likely have to tell him right now that he wants the fight, and then fight would likely still have to wait until Pacquiao faces the guys that Arum already has in mind for him to fight next September in Alvarado or Marquez. What this means is that Mayweather would have to wait until 8-10 months, and there would be a possibility that Pacquiao would get beaten before then in his next fight against Alvarado or Marquez. Neither of those guys are a cakewalk for Pacquiao, because they can punch and Marquez seems to already have Pacquiao’s number after four previous fights against him.
If Arum were to start talking about outdoor stadiums or if he comes across like he’s dictating how things will go in a Mayweather-Pacquiao negotiation, then it’s very likely that Mayweather will change his mind about wanting to fight Pacquiao. He’s not going to want to get bossed around or told some kind of hoop needs to be jumped through for him to get the fight when he’s the bigger name for this fight.
You would have to hope that Arum puts things in perspective and realizes that he’s not dealing with one of Pacquiao’s opponents that don’t have a strong bargaining position. In a Mayweather-Pacquiao negotiation, Mayweather is clearly the King and he can dictate whatever the terms are that he wants. If Arum forgets himself and starts talking like Pacquiao is the top guy in the negotiations, then he’ll spoil the negotiations before they even get started.
“We’re prepared to sit down with his people anytime and work out the conditions for the fight,” Arum said. “All they have to do is pick up the friggin phone.”
In the past Arum said he didn’t know who to call in order to start negotiations with Mayweather. He said he didn’t know who his management representative is, and that’s why he wasn’t calling. That made a lot of boxing fans think that Arum wasn’t serious about wanting to put Pacquiao in with Mayweather.
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